The Valuable
by Shane C
Summary: Book 6 in my Animorphs mini-series, Tobias' POV. Takes place in between books #13 and #19. The Animorphs learn a little more about their own planet and how it might work against them. Through the Chee Net, they also are forewarned about a daring plan of the Yeerks', which Tobias and friends have no choice but to try to stop. IC, canon content. Please review if you read. Complete!
1. Chapter 1

**The Valuable**

Chapter 1

(Rachel! On your right!) I called down. Rachel's grizzly morph is extremely near-sighted, and she needs a little help from time to time. I saw her turn right, and all of a sudden, she could see the human-controller running up on her with a machete. Bad move. _Hooaar! _Rachel's morph let out a full-throated roar that scared _me_, and I was a hundred feet above her. She reared up on two legs and laid into a grizzly right hook – the guy went flying. Literally airborne. He bounced twice and stayed down – the smartest thing he'd done yet.

Another, different roar demanded my attention, and I looked to the south. Three Hork-bajir had separated Jake from Cassie, and they were backing him toward the brick wall of the pump station. If I hadn't been using my head to focus my laser-sharp eyes, I would have shaken it derisively – you don't corner a mad Siberian tiger. You just don't do it, I don't care if you _are _a bladed alien from hell and you've got two of your buddies with you.

Jake probably could have taken them all – at times, it seemed like he was getting to be like a pro in his preferred battle morph. Like a black belt or something. He'd learned most of the tiger's tricks to win a fight, and then he'd added all of his human cunning on top of that. It was hardly even fair. But I didn't want Jake to get torn up too badly in his fight, which could happen when you had roughly eighteen razor-sharp blades slashing at you simultaneously. I folded my wings back and hit a stoop. I locked onto the lead Hork-bajir, intent on evening up the odds for Jake a little. I didn't even see the guy who almost ended my life before I was in a full dive, and the speed of the dive probably saved me.

A weird sound was the only thing that tipped me off right before I was in a world of trouble. _Pteww!Pteww!Pteww!Pteww!Pteww! –_ it was almost like a video game noise, like a laser noise from an 80s arcade game. That was the thought I had right before I was surrounded by bright pink Dracon fire.

Above! Behind! Either side! I was in a cage of pure Dracon beams! It was like it was raining energy from the ground all of a sudden! I instinctively barrel-rolled, breaking off to the right, and skimmed into the tree tops. Branches and leaves burst into flame around me; I felt the edges of my feathers sizzle and instantly felt the loss of maneuverability. Almost off-handedly, I noted the guy who was shooting at me.

One guy. He was holding what looked like a chromed-out Super Soaker, except it wasn't water coming out of this weapon – it was a solid stream of Dracon energy. It was something we'd never seen before – all the portable Dracon cannons we'd ever seen were small, handheld units that looked a little like an early Star Trek phaser. They were powerful weapons, but they'd always been limited to about maybe one shot per three seconds.

Not this one. It was like a machine gun for laser beams. A clearing opened up in front of me, and all of a sudden I was unprotected. I swear, I saw the guy smile as he lined me up. He pulled the trigger, and I said a random, disjointed prayer as I prepared myself to be blown into individual atoms.

When the man pulled the trigger, two things happened. Loud, even over the sounds of the battle that was still raging, the weapon let out a sickly-sounding _thwee-WONK! _Then, it exploded.

I don't mean blew up a little bit. It was like films of a nuclear bomb going off – one minute the dude was standing there, preparing to blow me away with his new toy. A split second later, there was an intense flash of light that swallowed him up. There was a loud sound that resembled the world's biggest mosquito hitting a Bug Zapper, then he was gone. No shoes, no wedding ring, no fillings left behind – nothing. Gone.

My friends all started yelling at once, which I took as a good thing. It meant none of them had been close enough to the explosion for it to get them. I tried to clear the spots from my vision as I searched the semi-wooded area for anywhere else I might be needed.

It was supposed to be one of those now-common missions we were starting to become _way _too comfortable with – through our growing sources of information on the Yeerks, we'd discovered that they were up to something involving the water pumping station on the edge of town. Naturally, we had no idea _what_, exactly, they were doing there. We just knew that if they wanted it, we had to take it away. So that was the plan – go in, cause too much trouble for the site to be worth it to them, and get out. And it had been going fairly well, until the homeboy with the Dracon machine gun showed up and almost turned me into a Red-tailed Fricassee.

Almost. These days, _almost dead _was just a pretty common state for us. By us, I mean the Animorphs – the crazy people this particular story is centered around.

While I'm at this part, guess I ought to do a little explaining. You know, as to why I was flying around above an alien installation as a Red-tailed hawk while the rest of my friends ran around below me, attacking said aliens in various, dangerous animal morphs of their own.

Our planet has been officially invaded. Not by aliens you can see; no, this is more of an _Invasion of the Body Snatchers-_type of deal. Sure, the Yeerks have their Hork-bajir slaves and their Taxxon allies; _those _you would recognize as outworlders. In fact, the very first thought you'd have upon seeing one is, '_Holy Alien Centipede, Batman! That thing is _not _from around here._'

Yeerks are just alien slugs, though. I'm not being racist or speciesist or whatever – seriously, in their natural state they just look like big ol' Earth slugs, minus the stalk eyes. They're parasites, and they have the terrifying ability to completely take over a human body. Or Hork-bajir, or Taxxon, or any other sentient species with a brain and an auditory canal.

They do this in secret, which is why we're in deep danger of losing this war. Once they have enough human bodies under their control, I'm sure they'll take great delight in dragging the rest of us screaming from our homes. Well, those of us who _have _homes, anyway.

I'm lucky, in that regard. I'm a _nothlit, _which means I'm stuck in morph. Again, luckily, it was a hawk body I got myself stuck in. I'm useful to the cause because of my mobility and my eyesight, which Superman would seriously be jealous of. I can read a paperback novel from a half a mile up, given that the reader holds the book relatively still. Not to mention, it would be impossible for the Yeerks to make a controller out of me. The worst they can do to me is kill me. Like I said, I'm lucky.

Prince Elfangor was not so lucky. Me, Jake, Rachel, Cassie, and Marco were walking home from the mall, using the abandoned construction site as a shortcut like a bunch of idiots. Elfangor crash-landed his fighter in front of us, told us what was going on, and gave us the power to morph. We can change into any animal we can touch; even I can still morph, even though normal _nothlits _can't. In addition to your everyday aliens bouncing around the galaxy, you've got your uber-powerful beings, too. One of them called an Ellimist used me for my help and rewarded me by giving me my morphing powers back. I can even morph myself, my human self. Just like any other morph, though, I can be trapped in it. And the Ellimist made it pretty clear that this is my one mulligan, as far as morphing goes.

Anyway, by some stroke of coincidence (or maybe something a little less random,) we rescued Ax off of the ocean floor about a month after we met Elfangor. Aximili is Elfangor's brother, although he's just a kid like us. Well, he's got two advantages over any human kid that might have joined our fight – he's an Andalite, a sworn enemy of the Yeerk, and he pretty much knows everything about them. Also, he's an Andalite _aristh – _like a rookie in the military. '_A rookie?_' you might roll your eyes. '_We have to count on five kids and a rookie to beat the Yeerks?_' Well, all I can say is that an _aristh _is better than nothing, especially when he's your encyclopedia on useful information pertaining to the Yeerks.

Jake leads us. He didn't volunteer, didn't want to do it; which, I guess, is why he ended up as the leader. He's not some bossy jerk who likes to steal the show, he's just a guy with a good heart that happens to be good at making decisions under pressure. He also happens to be the only one of us mentally tough enough to take on the title; I honestly think that without Jake, we wouldn't have lasted this long.

He's Rachel's cousin, and I already mentioned her. Rachel is unique. One time, before this whole mess started, I watched a video on Joan of Arc. I remember thinking, '_This girl must have been one hell of a warrior to get all of those guys to follow her, especially in that age of exaggerated sexism._' Now that I knew Rachel, I wasn't really all that impressed with Joan anymore.

See, if Joan had gone to all the soldiers and said, "God told me to fight! He told me to lead you in battle!" and they had all laughed at her, that would have been the end of the story. She probably would have died in obscurity. If Rachel had been in Joan's shoes, she would have gotten the guys fired up just with her own attitude. I swear, I can see her in my mind's eye, wearing a suit of plate mail and looking amazing, yelling at her soldiers. "Let's go! Let's do it, you wusses! I'd get your mommies to come, but it's a hard ride and we need to save the horses. Let's get going, let's rock!" All the while she'd have this psychotic, beautiful grin on her face, and she'd be swinging her sword wildly over her head. And if the soldiers had all told her to go screw herself? Rachel would have charged against an army of 5,000 men by herself, anyway. _That's _Rachel.

I'm always fascinated by Rachel. That's what drew me to her – she's not confrontational, but she sure knows how to handle it. Confrontation, I mean. I wanted to get to know her better because I wanted to understand how someone could be so confident all the time, so totally sure of themselves. Little by little, I found out the truth – Rachel _isn't _always sure of herself. But she never lets anybody else see that – she even hides those little moments of doubt from herself, if she can. But for some reason, Rachel feels the same way about me that I do her. At first, when I got stuck in hawk morph, she pitied me. Now that I can morph and fight again, that pity is slowly turning into respect. Rachel respects my decision to live as a hawk in order to be able to fight with her – with everybody. And, thankfully, every day our relationship gets a little more equal.

I'm not the only Animorph with a little more than a battle bond with another member. Jake and Cassie are more or less a couple. I say more or less, because neither of them will openly admit it. But when you're a hawk…with all of this free time and super vision, naturally a bit of people watching is going to happen. And I see how couples act all the time. Jake and Cassie are definitely a couple.

I guess it's Jake's idea to not park the relationship bus out front and center. I have mad respect for Cassie; the girl does every bit as much for the cause as the rest of us, and then she shames us all by doing triple the amount of chores and _still _holding down an A-average. But I have the feeling that if Jake were to tell her, "I'm through playing games," and kissed her passionately, we'd be privy to the two of them holding hands forever and ever.

Maybe that's a little unfair. I don't want to give you the impression that Cassie wouldn't sacrifice anything for our resistance – she has, already. It's just that Cassie's more easygoing than Jake, more likely to go along to get along. Unless an issue of morality comes up – when that happens, you can be sure Cassie's going to pipe up and be heard. Sometimes it's annoying; most of the time, it's what keeps us from crossing the line.

Don't tell that to Marco, though. Marco's the fifth human member. He's of the opinion that any lines that might be drawn as to the morality of our actions were erased when the first Yeerk landed here. He fiercely believes that we have to do anything and everything in our power to stop the Yeerks, and we don't have the luxury of stopping and asking ourselves, "Oh, wait, is this right? Morally, I mean?" He makes the point that if we're not immoral now, we won't be around to make the good choice later. Most of the time, I secretly agree with him.

It's his way of presenting his ideas that needs the work. Half of the time, I can't tell if he's kidding or not. When he gets really serious about something, he comes on way too strong. Insults, jokes, comic relief? Marco does all that for us. But when he needs to present an alternate course of action in a logical and calm way? You'd be more likely to get that out of a piece of construction paper than Marco.

(I believe we have done the necessary damage to this structure,) Ax called. (Prince Jake, shall we start the planned retreat?)

(Good work, Ax. Yes, strategic retreat. Everybody okay?) Everyone checked in that they were. (Good. Take the planned routes back to Cassie's barn.) With that, I saw his large feline form slink into the deeper woods and away from my eyes.

I wheeled and scanned the area one last time before leaving. There were several controllers of different species scattered around the property. Some were still unconscious; most were already moaning and treating injuries to their host bodies. Through the broken window of the pumping station, I could see a huge panel of important-looking computers – it was crumpled on one side and still throwing sparks all over the place. Satisfied, I turned to the east and headed back to base – Cassie's barn.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I lagged behind the others a bit, giving them a head start, before I started tacking my way toward the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center – a.k.a., Cassie's barn. It was a habit I was into, making sure that all of my friends got away cleanly. Most of the time, they were too tired or disturbed to watch their backs for anyone who might follow them; they didn't ask me to, but like I said, watching their escapes for anything shady was just a habit of mine.

Once I decided the Yeerks were more concerned with putting their forces back right and covering up the signs of the raging battle, I swiftly flapped for the barn. The wind was against me and it wore me out pretty quickly, but I knew I'd have a while to rest, now that the excitement was over.

Well, the excitement was _mostly _over. As I skimmed through a missing slat in the barn's roof and hit my perch with practiced accuracy, I could hear Marco complaining. Not unusual.

"Come on, we don't even know what they were doing there! And I'm supposed to risk my life for this sort of crap? Attacking the Yeerks without an idea of what they want and how to stop them?"

"In this case, we didn't _need _to know what they were doing," Rachel pointed out aggressively. "Our job was to evict them from the pumping station. Unless they're total idiots, we did that. Case closed."

"We also got some valuable information," Cassie said mildly, and all eyes turned to look at her. "Tobias was attacked by a new Yeerk weapon we haven't seen before. At least now, we can be ready for it."

"That's another thing!" Marco crowed. I hadn't realized anyone had noticed my near-death experience; they'd all kind of had a lot going on at the time. "Now the Yeerks have fully automatic Dracon guns? I was terrified of the old ones. Now some Yeerk Rambo is going to come flying through the jungle every time we fight them, emptying his energy clip at us? Pass. I'll definitely pass."

"It is not that easy," Ax, in human morph, said. "Itiss. Noteasy." He spent a minute playing with those particular sounds, and if I had had a mouth, I would have laughed.

Ax, as I said, is our resident Andalite. Andalites are the good guys – or, at least we think they are. They're allegedly going to come and save us from the Yeerks as soon as they can. I don't know about that. I _do _know that Ax is one Andalite we _can_ count on.

Andalite. Think centaur, and you're halfway there. His tail is long, muscular, and bladed; it's very obviously a weapon. His arms are weak, his hands are too long with too many fingers. He has no mouth but four eyes. It's pretty weird, trying to have a conversation with an Andalite when they keep making eye contact with different combinations of main eyes and stalk eyes, but you get used to it.

Ax is a pillar of virtue and a shining example of the ideal Andalite _aristh_ – when he's in his own body. When he's in human morph, he's way too distracted with mouth-sounds and things to taste to be called a shining example of anything other than insanity. He's getting better about it, but you still wouldn't want to invite him to a dinner party.

Jake paid close attention when Ax spoke. Ax will often sit out of our discussions for lots of reasons, the main one being that he just doesn't understand all the nuances of human communication. In other words, he doesn't understand why we argue as much as we do, and he just stays out of it. So when he speaks up at a meeting, its usually important. Jake didn't miss that. "What's that, Ax?" he asked, and everyone quieted down their side conversations and paid attention.

Once everyone was looking at Ax, he continued. "Marco is incorrect – we will not have to face Yeerks wielding the fully automatic version of the Dracon rifle we saw this afternoon." He spoke confidently, as if he were absolutely sure of it.

(How can you know?) I asked him.

"It is simple physics," he explained, as if I were a small child. "Energy weapons, like Shredders and Dracons, are highly unstable. In fact, the most difficult part of the development by far is the stabilization of such a weapon. It is why most energy weapons are slow-firing; let out too much energy too fast, and destabilization is sure to occur." He then kind of ruined the Einstein effect by saying the word "destabilization" so fast so many times in a row it sounded like he was gargling.

"Well, the Yeerks obviously figured it out," Marco said glumly. "You saw it yourself."

Ax shook his head again. "No. What do you think happens when this destabilization I speak of takes place?" Marco shrugged. "A condition known as a _Flaargaar _occurs. You saw it yourself – a _flaargaar _is a mix between a Sario Rip and a black hole."

Jake looked confused, the way he'd gotten the one time we'd discussed time travel with Ax. "Are you saying when that weapon blew up, it took the controller through a Sario Rip. Through time?"

If it's possible to read the body language of an alien in a human morph, I could see that Ax was getting frustrated. "No. The explosion will draw anyone in the vicinity into it, and then promptly crush their mass down into the size of a quark."

We all thought about that – it was just another unpleasant fact of our new life. Okay, so now we knew the Yeerks had weapons that may explode, and if you're too close when they do, you get smashed down smaller than an atom. Awesome. Cassie asked the question we were all too distracted to ask.

"If a rapid fire energy weapon is such a bad idea, why are the Yeerks using them? And while we're at it, why is the first place we saw one at some out-of-the-way, backwater installation? You'd think if they just developed them, they'd be on the front lines."

Marco might be abrasive, but he's smart. He got there faster than anyone else and answered Cassie's question. "They put them out of the way as a field test. What happens if they pack the Pool ship full of them, and they go boom? No, this is some new Yeerk research and development, and we were a part of one of the first experiments." He turned to Ax. "The big question is this – is this something they're going to fool around with and then scrap, because they'll come to the same conclusion you Andalites did? Or is there a chance that they could actually figure out a way to make this technology work?"

I didn't even need to be Ax's _shorm _to know how he was going to react to that one. "Are you implying that the Yeerks will be able to develop a technology that we Andalites tried and failed? When I have repeatedly told you that Yeerk technology is just reverse-engineered Andalite technology?" His face was flushed and his words were strained; he still wasn't very good at controlling his human morph.

Marco threw up his hands. Jake argued each side against the middle. Rachel used her own attitude to keep Marco's in check, and Cassie tried unsuccessfully to chill everybody out. We all left the barn feeling pretty crappy, like we always did when we had questions without answers.

All I know is that I was almost made extra-crispy by a Yeerk machine gun, even though Ax said it wasn't possible to make one. And I hoped that Marco and Ax were right, that this was just some failed test of the Yeerks' that we'd never see again. But I had a funny feeling that this whole Dracon thing was going to get worse before it got better.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The sun was setting, and as the others headed toward their individual homes, I went to my meadow.

It's not the same thing as a house. There's no comfy bed or refrigerator stocked with food and drink. There's no address, no street, no manicured lawn. It _is _home to me, nonetheless. And it's not like I'd had the nice, safe bed or well-stocked kitchen before this happened to me, anyway.

I miss those days less and less, now. The days of being shuttled from coast to coast between two siblings of my mother, neither of whom wanted me around. My aunt was a power-broker, which meant her life revolved around the stock market and, by default, the bottom line. I know my aunt saw me just as something to list on her balancesheet at the end of the year. Did she make more in tax deductions for taking me in than she lost in petty cash for room and board? Probably, but it didn't lift her profit enough to want me around.

My uncle, the man I'd been living with when we'd had our encounter with Elfangor, was even worse. At least at my aunt's house, I was left alone. My uncle was a roofer. He might have been good at it; I don't know. I _do _know that he stayed home as much as he worked, and while he was home, he was drunk. Sometimes that was a bad thing, like when he was riled up and wanted somebody to take the negative things in his life out on. A lot of times it was good, because he was simply too drunk to make trouble or he was completely passed out.

Either way, from the start it had been clear neither of them gave a damn about me. I don't say that to get pity; it's just the way it is. It worked out, too. I don't care about them, either, which was why my transition from human-in-a-house to hawk-in-a-meadow was relatively easy. Of course I missed things about being human. When a person is hungry, they raid the fridge. When a hawk is hungry, they have to hunt.

No big deal. I actually kind of like it that way. I have a lot of time to think, and I'm pretty sure society itself is why such a huge number of people are so royally screwed up. The way it's supposed to work, people are supposed to be focused on hunting and gathering and surviving. We are supposed to be a part of the food chain, not the masters of it.

Something happened. People figured everything out, and over time, safety pretty much became a guarantee. Eating wasn't a worry anymore, it was automatic.

Anyway, that's what I think is wrong with the world. People were designed to have their days filled with hunting, building, hiding, and surviving. Now that those things were just givens, people had _way _too much time to whine about all the unimportant crap that makes them unhappy. 10,000 years ago, people laid down for bed thinking, '_Hey, nothing ate me today and I found some berries. It was a good day._' Now, people can't stop thinking about their mortgage, or their car, or their 401k, or one of about a million other things that just don't matter.

Me? Of course, I have the Yeerks to worry about on top of everything else in my life. But, again, that was really not that big of a deal. I mean, I kill to survive on a daily basis. I'm watchful for things that want to kill me all the time. The Yeerks are just like any other predator that I'm competing with, only it's actually fair. They're sentient, and so am I.

My thoughts were interrupted as a flash from the dying sun illuminated a tiny patch of fur in the meadow. Just a single square millimeter of grey fur, but it was enough for my ever-watchful eyes. I spread my wings in slow motion, as to not make a sound. One hard, strong pull like the breaststroke of an Olympic rower, and I was airborne.

The mouse didn't have a prayer. If I had just abandoned myself to the hawk's instincts, I would have had about a 50% success rate at hunting. With my human intelligence and the fact that I could learn, I was up in the neighborhood of about 80%. Eight out of ten times I took to the air to hunt, I killed something worth eating. I had the best stats in the Red-tailed division, no doubt.

I quickly finished my meal. I would have taken my time about it, but the sun was below the horizon and nightfall was shrouding the meadow with an eerie speed. The meadow may be mine by day, but at night it belongs to a clever fox and a deadly, silent owl. I don't worry about the fox; he's smart, and I know he'd have no problem eating a Red-tailed TV dinner, but he's just too loud to creep up on me, even in a dead sleep.

The owl, however, freaks me out. I sleep deep in a hollow of a rotted-out tree trunk, and there's no way a predator could get at me without a little work…but you have no idea how dangerous owls are. They are the ninjas of the birds of prey. Silent, swift, and every bit as deadly as me…and then, their senses are perfectly tuned to pick up the slack in mine. Everything I miss seeing and hearing at night, the owl picks it up.

Anyway, this particular owl hadn't taken a shot at me yet, and by now that meant he probably wouldn't. It still freaks me out. It still makes me crack an eye every half hour or so. Every night except for this one; I was exhausted. Fighting the Yeerks will do that to you, especially when they pull some new trick out of their evil hat. As I settled in to sleep, I told myself that if the Yeerks couldn't do me in, the world was just going to have to wait another day before it claimed _this _hawk. I closed my eyes and slept peacefully for the most solid chunk of time in a long time.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The next morning, it was my turn to get the paper. Once Ax had realized that most people got their news in daily print, he was hooked. When neither of us had anything going on with the Yeerks, we would sometimes go on a "change run." You'd be absolutely amazed at how many quarters you can find and where you can find them – in parking lots, around pay phones and vending machines, drive-thrus…basically, if you can think of a place people spend money, you can find quarters there.

There was still a small stack of them in Ax's scoop; Ax was off, probably doing his morning ritual. I picked up one in each talon and flew toward the gas station at the corner of the woods. Once I was across the street, hidden in some trees, I demorphed.

The others all say morphing is weird and disturbing. Me, I barely even notice it anymore. I guess when you eat something that looks like it belongs in an anatomy textbook every day, morphing just isn't really that bad. I heard and "felt" the changes occur, but it was an old morph, almost second nature. It probably wasn't even two minutes later that I was jogging across the street in my morphing outfit – bike shorts and a child's t-shirt. Luckily, it was still dark, and nobody noticed as I put my money in the box, pulled out the newspaper, and jogged back into the woods.

I walked slowly back to Ax's scoop, watching where I was stepping to avoid cutting my bare feet. Sure, the injury would be gone as soon as I morphed, but there's something hard-wired into the human brain to dislike damage to the body. Even if you know, logically, the injury is only temporary, it still hurts. It still bothers you. It can still make you feel sick. So, if I can help it at all, I don't do anything to get hurt in human morph.

Maybe fifteen minutes later, I stumbled on Ax's scoop. In hawk form, I knew exactly where the scoop was. I could spot it from a mile away, despite the bang-up camo job Ax and I had done on it. In human morph, with bad senses and no natural compass, I always considered myself lucky to find it at all.

I set the paper on Ax's coffee table. Now that my job was done, I quickly demorphed. Ax wasn't back yet, so I figured I'd get myself breakfast before coming back to help Ax with the news.

It took me a little longer than usual, but I eventually found a little garden snake out in the open. After I ate, I went back to Ax's. I found him standing at the table with the paper spread out in front of him, his four eyes scanning three different articles at once. It sounds freaky, but you haven't seen multitasking until you've met an Andalite. (What's up, Ax?) I asked pleasantly.

He took one eye off of the spread of papers and blinked it once in his "hi, I see you" gesture. (Good morning, Tobias. Thank you for the newspaper. I would like your opinion on a few of the articles,) he said a little sheepishly.

Ax didn't want my opinion, he wanted me to translate. While he spoke and read English just fine, it was the human _concepts _he had trouble with. He just wanted to understand, and without me explaining things, that was really impossible. Sometimes, even _with _me explaining, he didn't get it.

We went over the articles together. Ax knew just enough about human culture to be dangerous. I explained to him that a fishing rodeo did not involve people riding fish. I explained that a funeral procession was allowed to interrupt traffic because it was a sign of respect. I was just about exasperated when I spotted an article myself that caught my eye.

"Houdini Thief Strikes Again – Police Baffled, No Clues Left" was the bold headline that caught my attention. I quickly read the article. To any normal person, it would have been of minor interest. I mean, people just don't get away with robbing banks anymore. When I got to the part about how the electronic security had somehow been overridden, I got hinky. When I got to the part about the vault door being melted off of its hinges by an unknown, extremely powerful cutting tool, I got goosebumps. And when I got to the end, where they were discussing how odd it was that no cash had been stolen, I was sure. Yeerks. No doubt about it – for someone who knew what to look for, this had the Yeerks' fingerprints all over it.

I mentally sighed, already dreading being the bearer of bad news and ruining everybody's Saturday. To me, it was obvious the Yeerks were up to something – again – and it was going to be up to us to figure it out and stop them. Again. (Look at this, Ax.) I gave him a moment to read the article, and even though I'm sure he was full of questions, I didn't miss the way his main eyes narrowed as he read. (I'm thinking Yeerks, too.) Ax jerked, as if shocked that I knew what he was thinking, then shook his head slowly. (Why would the Yeerks be robbing bank vaults now, Ax?)


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

(I gathered from the article that a vault is a secure place to keep valuables,) Ax said. (Humans consider many strange things valuable, though. What is kept in them, besides human money?) He said the last part with a tiny thought-speech sneer; Ax thinks the concept of money is stupid, for whatever reason.

I tried to think. I wasn't rich, never had been, so I'd never been inside of a bank vault. (Um, cash, of course. Valuable paperwork, like land deeds or savings bonds. Savings bonds are another type of money. Let's see…I'm sure people keep jewelry in them – you know, gold and silver, diamonds and pearls, that sort of thing.)

Ax main eyes narrowed. (Gold and silver I know of. What are diamonds and pearls?)

(Jewels. Just really pretty rocks, when you get right down to it. Diamonds are just pure, compressed carbon,) I told him, remembering science class the best that I could.

When I said that, Ax nodded as if everything finally made sense. (What is it?) I asked, impatient.

(It would make sense for the Yeerks to want to steal human diamonds. These, among other rare, geological, chemical formations, are not only valuable on Earth.)

I couldn't help it; I laughed out loud. (You're telling me the Yeerks are risking their secret invasion to get diamonds? A girl's best friend?)

Ax didn't see the humor in it. After he explained, neither did I. (I do not know who the diamonds would be friends with, but I know why the Yeerks want them. Just about all advanced technology uses diamonds. They are useful for everything from making focusing lenses to converting them to energy storage. Gold is a universal conductor – even your human scientists are learning this. Gold is just starting to be used in communications equipment.) He went over to his little bookshelf and started scanning titles, looking for a particular book. (But you're right. It doesn't make sense for the Yeerks to try and get them now. Why not just wait until the invasion is complete? All of the Earth's resources could be taken freely, then. Aha,) he found the book he was looking for.

I waited patiently as he flipped through the chemistry textbook at a speed which suggested he wasn't even reading anything. (No, but that's not right,) he kept muttering. Finally, he asked me, (Tobias, are these chemical compositions correct? They can't be,) he showed me the book. All I saw was a long string of letters and numbers connected by lines and shapes.

(I don't know, Ax-man, I'm no chemist. Why do you think they'd be wrong, though?)

He shook his head, troubled. (It's just that we Andalites have been synthesizing _carbonite – _or diamonds – for years. We thought we had the process down perfectly. But if what this book says is true, then natural Earth diamonds are ten times more pure than our best synthesis. _That _is why the Yeerks want them. Things that are impossible now would be possible, if one could get a hold of diamond samples this pure.)

(What impossible things?) I asked, trying not to get frustrated.

He looked at me with all four eyes, something that really got my attention. (For starters, the rapid fire Dracon beam that was used against you could be made to work. With materials this pure, _I _could convert an energy weapon to rapid fire, and I am just a normal Andalite.)

"I see the two of you are already on the case," a familiar voice came from behind us. Both Ax and I jumped – between the two of us, we were impossible to sneak up on. Impossible, unless you were an older-than-the-pyramids android with advanced stealth and cloaking holographic technology. "Hello Ax, Tobias."

(Hey Erek,) I said, not one hundred percent surprised to see him around. Erek and his kind, the Chee, had been popping up more and more often these days, especially when the Yeerks were up to something weird. (I take it you know something about these robberies.)

He nodded; at least, he made the holograph of his human head nod. "Yes, and you and Aximili are correct to be concerned. The Yeerks have learned what you just learned – that the purity of Earth's precious metals and gems can bump their technology ahead by a hundred years. With a few years of research and development, the Yeerks can leap-frog the Andalites in terms of technology."

I I'd have had lips, I would have whistled. (And that would be game over, for sure,) I said. Erek looked up at me with troubled, holographic eyes and nodded his agreement.

Ax was still obviously troubled. (I just don't understand. The chemical compositions of these elements do not match up to similar elements of Earth's environment. It doesn't make sense.)

"Yet," Erek corrected him. "It doesn't make sense _yet._" He looked to me again. "Tobias, if you wouldn't mind, would you gather the rest of your friends? My story is a long one, and it would be prudent to only tell it once. Bring your friends, and I'll explain everything."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

It took a little over an hour to find everybody and get them to Ax's scoop. Normally, I can have everybody rounded up and assembled in forty-five minutes, but it was Saturday and they were scattered around town. I found Jake and Marco at the new laser tag place off of Westwood Avenue. Cassie was trying to catch up on homework in the barn while simultaneously observing a few of her dad's post-op patients. I almost freaked out when I couldn't find Rachel at the normal places – her house, the mall, the Chinese restaurant down the street from her house that she liked. By chance, I'd spotted her walking home from the Y with a gym bag; apparently, she was going to try to give gymnastics another try. Good. The more normal Rachel's life was, the better I slept.

Rachel and I were the last of the Animorphs to arrive. Ax was standing off to the side, the definition of the word 'aloof.' He looked upset, the way he'd been ever since Erek had suggested that the Yeerks might actually be tech-savvier than his own people in the near future. Cassie and Jake were quietly sitting beside each other, trying to not make it obvious the backs of their hands were touching. Marco, being Marco, was trying to berate Erek into telling him what was going on. Patience is not Marco's strong suit.

"This doesn't make sense, man," he was complaining loudly as Erek's hologram grinned at him. "So, right when I'm kicking Jake's butt at laser tag by about a thousand points, I have to come to Ax's house to stop the Yeerks. Only, for once, the Yeerks aren't terrorizing innocents; they're stealing _jewelry_. _Jewelry._ They're looking to get iced out. Blinged up, Diddy-style. What's next? They gonna put rims on their Bug fighters? Dracon drive-bys? Let me guess; we're going to have a wave of dentist infestations, so the Yeerks can all get grills."

"Marco, shut up," Jake said conversationally as Rachel finished demorphing. He stood only reluctantly, leaving Cassie sitting alone on the bench inside of the scoop. Without even realizing it, he walked to where he could see everybody at once. Once he was in this position of power and had everyone's attention, he looked to Erek. "Well? Tobias says you've got a story to tell, and here we are to listen."

Erek nodded amicably. "Believe me, this story plays a huge part in what's going on with the Yeerks right now." He deactivated his hologram and stood in front of us, looking like a humanoid dog. A robot, humanoid dog. "Hundreds of thousands of years ago, before the Howlers came and wiped out the Pemalites, we knew of another race." His hologram started showing moving pictures, like a movie montage that went along with the words Erek was saying.

The hologram showed one of the dog-like Pemalites interacting with a weird-looking creature; it almost looked like they were playing patty cake, no kidding. The other creature almost looked like an opaque version of the blob – arms randomly grew out of and then reabsorbed into the widely-grinning mass. I realized that they were laughing as they played.

"The Klakk were our friends. They were _everybody's _friends. That's all they wanted out of life – friends to play with. As soon as they were able, they took to the stars on a single, self-appointed mission – to make friends. That was the long and short of it. They went out into the galaxy looking for friends."

The holographic picture show switched to a view of space. It showed hundreds and hundreds of organic-looking spacecraft leaving a planet that really didn't look all that different from Earth. It showed them all breaking away, each one going into Z-space pointed in a different direction.

"Most species they came across were primitive – too primitive. As you know, the more backward a species is, the more warlike it's tendencies – that's not a solid rule, but it's a pretty reliable guideline." Quick images of the Klakk trying to land on other planets flashed in front of us; in one image, bird-like creatures threw rocks at the spaceship before the Klakk could even get out. In another, creatures that looked like a cross between lizards and porcupines fired things that looked like cannons at them.

"The Klakk were sad. They began to take a different approach – instead of finding new friends, they would _make _them. They concentrated on finding uninhabited, but habitable, systems." All of a sudden, the unmistakable image of Earth as seen from space dominated the scoop. "Earth was one of the first planets the Klakk seeded."

"Seeded?" Marco asked, caught up in the story. Erek shushed him with one ivory-and-metal finger to his nonexistent lips.

"Seeded – that's what the Klakk called it when they…prepared…a planet, like Earth. The Klakk planted materials at strategic points throughout the planets crust, so that their future friends would have the means to go to the stars with them." Cross-section views of the Earth's crust were shown, and even before it zoomed in, you could see the diamonds in huge clusters beneath the surface. You could see the deep, uniform, beautiful veins of gold that ran through the crust, like a network of arteries.

"The Klakk would not leave it to chance that these planets they seeded would produce intelligent life. They were good geneticists, but they didn't want to simply create a race to play with. They saw the relationship between Pemalite and Chee as fun, but a little odd. There was an inequality about it in their eyes; creator and created, not true friends."

Suddenly, we were looking at prehistoric Earth creatures drawn up into Klakk ships by what looked like an honest-to-God tractor beam. A wooly mammoth cub first, then a whale-like creature, then some sort of flying mammal. Finally, Erek showed us the inside view of a Klakk ship in which they were doing gentle experiments on an ape-like creature. "Instead of just creating something out of genetic material, they simply gave evolution a boost. They saw that the primates were going to be the rulers of this planet, and the Klakk encoded rapid mutation into their genome." Another Earth-from-space view, only this time it was fast-forwarded. It was a time-lapse video that covered fifty-thousand years in about ten seconds. The continents moved. Ice receded. And then, looking more human than primate, Erek showed us a tribe of what would soon become humans. He showed them making fire and using tools to make other tools. We watched as they built first villages, then cities.

All of a sudden, he powered down his projection and drew the hologram back in to just cover his android body with a human one. Nobody said anything for a while. Finally, Rachel broke the silence. "So you're saying that humans are just…toys…that these Klakk built to play with?" She sounded sick.

Erek shook his head. "No. Humans would have evolved on this planet without the Klakk's interference – they just sped up the process. They had every intention of coming back to Earth before now to befriend the humans and take them to the stars."

"Let me guess," Marco said. "The Klakk went the way of the Pemalites before they could come back to Earth." He sounded mad about it.

Erek nodded. "Yes. The Klakk, like the Pemalites, had no weapons. When they encountered the Howlers, they never had a chance. They didn't even run when the Howlers opened fire; they thought it would be rude to interrupt their new friends' game." Now it was Erek himself who sounded sick.

Ax just stared. (So with the Klakk gone, this planet was left to evolve naturally. The humans have no idea how precious their planet is; out of a billion billion planets, Earth is one of only a few which has these extremely pure samples of metals and minerals. And the Yeerks accidentally stumbled upon it.)

"In the way that you mean, Aximili, it _was _an accident. Until very recently, the Yeerks did not know how precious the actual planet itself was. At first, they were only interested in the bodies." The hologram dropped, and Erek reached into a compartment built into his chest. He handed Rachel something; she opened her hand, and three large diamonds, uncut, rested in her palm. "Now that they've discovered that Earth itself can give them a technological advantage over the Andalites…" He looked us all in the eye as he let that hang. "I am afraid that they will forget about invasion and focus on conquest, regardless of the host body situation." For some reason, he looked directly at me. "The only thing keeping humans safe is the Yeerks' need for hosts. If the Yeerks decide that the planet is more important than the hosts, I fear the worst."

Ax said it so Erek didn't have to. (They will sterilize this planet by killing every living thing. Every plant, every tree, every creature that draws breath. They'll burn them all.)


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Cassie looked down at the diamonds Rachel had put into her hand. "These are really pretty, sure. But they would seriously obliterate all the life on this planet for them? They would destroy all of the beauty in nature for rocks and metal?"

Marco looked at her like she was crazy. "Of course they would! What, are you _new_ here?" He got up and started pacing, fired up. "Who do you think we're dealing with? Even the Nazis could be negotiated with. These are the _Yeerks_, Jack. They don't give a damn about anything that lives on this planet, _especially _humans. And I'll tell you another thing – I'd much rather them burn down the earth before making the entire human race a bunch of slaves."

Jake gave Marco a cool look. It wasn't even directed at me, and it made _me _feel chilly. "You need to relax," he said in the low, silky tone he uses when somebody's starting to make him mad. I saw why – while Marco had been ranting and raving, Cassie had started to cry. She wasn't weeping uncontrollably or anything, but the thought of everything on Earth dying in a hellacious ball of fire had started a few tears from her. Jake walked over and put his arm around her. "Don't worry, Cass. We'll stop them. It's what we do, right?" He tried a goofy smile on her, and it worked. She choked a laugh through her tears and gave him a grateful smile in return. And no one, not even Marco, made a comment about it.

Rachel had a weird look in her eye. It wasn't just the usual gung-ho attitude she carried around like a handbag; this was different. "Would it be such a bad thing if they decided to do that? I mean, it would take people a while to figure out what was going on, but eventually, they'd figure out the invaders are here and it's time to fight back, right?"

Ax and Erek, from two different races, somehow wore the same expression – pity. Erek, not oblivious to Cassie's discomfort, didn't want to go into details. "Yes, Rachel, it would be a bad thing. And the people wouldn't figure anything out until it was too late."

Rachel wasn't happy with that. "What do you mean? People are smarter than you think, Erek; when the Yeerks start vaporizing everything in sight, they'll figure it out."

Erek seemed to realize he was going to have to say it out loud, regardless of Cassie's feelings. "_You _don't understand, Rachel. The Yeerks aren't going to go door-to-door, shooting people. They're not even going to use that massive Dracon cannon on the Pool ship to wipe out whole cities. It'll be much, much cleaner – they'll simply set the sky on fire."

(What?) I blurted. I had expected something sort of like that, but not just a flat declaration of the impossible.

Erek turned to look at me, and he looked glad that I had finally grasped the seriousness of the situation. "They'll use quantum mechanics to set off a chain reaction. Earth's atmosphere has enough oxygen to catch fire, it just needs the right kind of spark. The Yeerks can do that. One second, the creatures of Earth will be going on about their business. The next, they'll be inhaling superheated atmosphere. Within seconds, before they even know what's happening, they'll be dead. Everything."

To my extreme surprise, this didn't make Cassie sad; it made her mad. Furious. Angrier than I'd ever seen her. She jumped up. Her face had gone ashy, except for two small spots of blood high up on her cheekbones. When she spoke, it was through gritted teeth. "No _way _are we letting that happen. I don't care if we have to steal a Bug fighter _right now_, take it up to the Pool ship, and set _them _on fire. Out of all the evil, horrible, atrocious -"

"I know," Jake said, cutting Cassie off gently. "I feel the same way. But honestly, Cassie, we're not facing any different if the Yeerks win the way they're going on about things now. Nothing's changed. We still have the same job."

Marco was apparently through with being scorned. "You're wrong, Jake. _Everything's _changed. At least the way things are, we have a chance. It's about a million to one odds, I'll give you that, but it's a chance. If the Yeerks start playing with these diamonds and figure out that they're primo…if they decide they could take the resources here and use them to take the _Andalites_…" he let it hang. We all knew how much as the Yeerks hated the Andalites. There could be nothing greater than being able to conquer them, make them slaves. They'd give up us humans in a heartbeat to get the Andalites. Not even Ax argued with Marco. He was right, and everybody knew it.

"So what do we _do?_" Rachel, sounding as frustrated as I'd ever heard her, asked Erek.

"All is not lost," Erek said soothingly. "Even now, the Chee Net is coming up with a plan. We know that there's no way to stop the Yeerks from getting hold of all the samples of materials they need. We just don't have the manpower."

"You mean _we _don't have the manpower," Marco corrected him glumly. The Chee aren't allowed to commit acts of violence. They can't even do things that might make violence possible.

Erek didn't take offense, just acknowledged Marco's correction. "Yes. That's what I mean. Anyway, we can't stop them from taking what they need. But, in order for our plan to work, we have to make it _seem _like we're trying to stop them. The Yeerks must believe with all of their black hearts that the Andalite bandits are trying their hardest to stop them from obtaining the precious items they want."

(And how do we do that?) I asked cautiously. This was sounding dangerous. Let me rephrase that – just being alive was dangerous for us. This was sounding borderline suicidal.

"The Yeerks are planning a daring, simultaneous robbery of multiple sites. When that happens, you must be ready to fight. You will have to go to stop them, only you'll know ahead of time that that's impossible. You just have to make it convincing."

"Let me get this straight," Marco said. "This will be a little different from our usual idiotic shenanigans in the following way – we're actually going to risk our lives in a fight that we already know we're going to lose."

Erek just smiled. "Have you ever heard the saying about losing the battle, but winning the war? That's what this will all be about. You'll have to lose the battle to win the war. Because if you lose this war, the one right in front of us…well, it'll be the last war in human history."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

I navigated the nighttime suburbs in a practiced, matter-of-fact way. Red-tailed hawks aren't night flyers, per se, but I'd made this trip several dozen times since becoming a hawk. And notice I said _nighttime, _not _dark_. Between the three-quarter moon and the wattage blazing up out of windows and from street lamps, it was almost like a second dusk.

My stomach fluttered a little as I homed in on one window in particular, one that was open to the chilly, still night air. The flutter had nothing to do with my rapid descent, either. I'd visited Rachel after-hours a bunch of times, but usually it was something casual. You know, we'd watch a couple of episodes of a sitcom on her little bedroom TV set, or I'd help her with her math homework or whatever.

It may have been my imagination, but there seemed to be something different about the way she'd asked me to come over. We'd all been about to leave the barn to go our separate ways, and Rachel asked if I would stop by. Not the usual, "So, you think you might come by later?" This was more of a pointed invitation; the way she'd asked was almost insisting. So I'd said sure, gone to hunt up a quick meal, and waited for her mom to go to sleep.

(Rachel?) I called down when I was about thirty feet above her house. (Is it cool?) She couldn't answer me, but I saw her waving her red and green Christmas sock out of the window – our all-clear signal. (Coming in,) I said, and I tucked my wings until they were only half-extended. I flared as my controlled fall took me toward the open window, turned on a dime, and perched neatly on top of Rachel's science textbook on her desk.

"Nice landing," she smiled. She was still dressed in her jeans and t-shirt from earlier and was situated on her bed, toying with the new laptop her dad had sent her for her birthday.

I hop-flapped from the desk to the bed, careful not to snag the comforter with my talons. (Thanks. So, what's up?) My usual greeting.

She shrugged and folded her computer closed, I guess to give me her full attention. "I don't know, I've just been thinking. If Erek is on the level – and he always is – we might not have very much time left. And, well, I just thought that you and I should talk _now_, in case we can't pull off this big mission the Chee are planning."

(Okay,) I said, trying to stay emotionless. It's kind of sad, but I've learned how to tap into the hawk that is a part of me. I was able to draw on the fact that the hawk didn't really care about nervousness or companionship. Some people say hawks mate for life, and I believe that might be true. But if it is, I can assure you it's more of a matter of convenience than love. Hawks don't love. A hawk would not risk his life to try to save his mate's. How many times had I done that for Rachel? Her for me? Beyond counting, at this point. (What do you want to talk about?)

She gave me a look that said, _please, don't waste my time being stupid. _"Of course, I want to talk about me and you. I'd call you my boyfriend, but that's such a trivial word for what we are, don't you think?" I didn't make a reply other than to nod my hawk head. She stared me down until I looked away – the first time in history a human's ever won a staring contest with a hawk. "We haven't even kissed, Tobias. Not really. Is it crazy of me to want that at a time like this? Don't you want to?"

I hesitated for a short moment – Rachel is impulsive. I kind of think of things for the both of us, sometimes. (Of course I do, Rach. I dream about it. I'd love nothing more.) I didn't even get embarrassed when I said that, either. Rachel doesn't put herself out there very often, so when she does, I always feel like I owe it to her to do the same. (But I can't afford it right now. The _team _can't afford it.)

She shook her head, surprised and confused. "Why not? What is the big deal? It's not like I'm asking you to stay human forever. I'm not asking that you give up the fight, or your wings. Why can't we afford two hours of being together, as humans?"

I surprised myself. I got a little worked up; even though Rachel was just being honest about her wants, she never stopped to think about what that would do to me. (Rachel,) I said, trying to keep my voice flat and emotionless – easier with thought-speech than actual speaking. (I'm barely holding on, as it is. I live in the woods. The high points of my days are reading the morning funnies with Ax. Well, unless you're around, that is. Most days I'm okay with where I'm at, but some nights it takes everything in me to force myself to stay in my tree. When the night hunters are out and I'm cowering in my little tree, how bad do you think I want to morph human and walk over here? How many times do you think I've imagined running away with you and trying to forget any of this ever happened?)

I could tell she'd never thought about that before, and it's not entirely her fault. I put on a tough exterior around the others; I'm careful to never let them know how lonely I am, at times. "Yeah. But you know we can't."

(Of course I know that,) I said, trying not to get frustrated. (That's why I haven't done it yet. It would only buy us a little time, and at way too big of a price. You're the one person who's ever really cared about me, and I can't even be close to you.)

"You can," she urged. "Just morph to human, Tobias. We may only get two hours at a time, but it'll have to be enough. Just morph, now."

I laughed slightly. (You're too reckless, Rachel,) I made my tone light so she'd know I wasn't dissing her. (So I morph to human and your mom decides to come check on you? How do you think she'd take the fact that there's a kid who is supposed to be dead in your room, wearing checkered bike shorts?)

She was getting frustrated with _me_ now. "I don't really care, Tobias. I care about you, and all these rules you put down are keeping me from showing you that."

For a split second, I considered giving in and morphing. But in the end, my better judgment won out. (You show me in all kinds of ways, and I appreciate it. But us being together, as humans, is not a good idea right now. Not for either of us.) I spread my wings and left through the window before she could try to guilt me into it some more.

**A/N – **_Please _don't kill me with reviews lamenting the loss of a romantic moment between R/T. I know what I wrote. Trust me. :D


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

I tried not to get upset as I flew home, I really did. You have no idea how easy it is to fall into a well of self-pity when you're alone – I mean, _truly _alone. As in, a one-of-a-kind freak of alien technology. I felt like, if there was one person in the world Rachel could be a little more sensitive toward, it was me. I _know _she wasn't trying to make things harder on me, but like I'd told her, I was barely hanging on, some days. Some days, I was just looking for a reason to return to human. Shake the last year off like it had been a bad dream.

Logically, I knew that was stupid. I was roughly fifteen years old – the human Tobias was, anyway. Not like I could go get a job. Not like I could rent myself a place. I would be more helpless in the human world than I was in my current situation. At least this way, I was more or less in control of my own life.

As true as all of that was, it still didn't keep me from wanting the body I'd been born in. It didn't help when I was hunkered down inside of my tree, hoping the thin layer of rotting bark would be enough to deflect a hungry Horned Owl. It didn't help when the others were complaining about schoolwork, and I was wishing fiercely that I could be complaining right along with them.

I decided to go to Ax's. I wasn't tired, and I really didn't feel like wallowing in my own pity. Luckily, this was an "up" night; Ax slept for a couple of hours every second or third night, but Andalites are a watchful species. Even when they do sleep, they do it standing up with one stalk eye open.

Ax was inside of his scoop, taking apart what looked to be your everyday food processor. (What are you up to, Ax?) I asked as I skimmed in and perched just outside of the open home scoop.

(I am amassing components from human electrical devices. Eventually, I would like to build something with them.) When I asked what he was building, he just shrugged, as if I'd missed the point. Maybe I had – it wasn't just Ax's life that could get boring out here, so I suppose I knew what he was going through. Trying to keep himself busy, to keep his thoughts off of home, and his family. As I had the thought, I realized that I wasn't nearly as alone as I'd thought. After all, I might not have family, but I have friends. I have members of my species around. Ax has us, but it's probably not the same as having your own species within a million miles.

For some reason, I spilled the story of everything that had happened at Rachel's. He listened thoughtfully, even though I wasn't sure how much of what I was saying translated. I mean, who knows if Andalite teenagers have these problems? Turns out they do; they also have a philosophy on self-pity. Ax gave me an Andalite lesson on their version of Zen.

Ax focused his main eyes on me, a move that let me know I had most, if not all, of his attention. (I believe I know how you are feeling, Tobias. And, forgive me, but I believe you being upset with Rachel is a way of deflecting your true emotions.) He held up a hand to stall my next comment; I almost laughed at how perfectly the gesture resembled Jake. (Would you like my true opinion?) he asked, and I nodded. (Okay. What I believe is happening is this – you feel guilty.)

(About what?) I blurted, honestly surprised.

(About Rachel. I know how much you care for her, Tobias. And I'd be a fool not to see that she feels the same for you. I believe you feel guilty because, while you sacrifice everything for the war, you cannot sacrifice to give Rachel what she wants, as well. You cannot do both. Subconsciously, you know that no matter how important Rachel is to you, saving your race is more important. And even though there is no way around this simple fact, you still feel guilty about not being able to do both. Fight the war, and please Rachel.)

I chewed on that for a while, and I realized he was right. (You know, you sure Dr. Phil'd the hell out of that one,) I told him, even though he'd have no idea who Dr. Phil was. (But what do I _do _about it?)

Ax began working on his little side project again. (That is easy. We Andalites do not approve of self-pity – this you know, correct?) I indicated that I did indeed know that. (That is not to say we all don't fall victim to it at one time or another. And, among my people, there is one activity that you can do that will take the feeling away.)

(What is it?) I asked, thinking it was going to be something crazy. Like, (We tie our stalk eyes together until we get a headache.) You know – something that Andalites can do, but I can't. So what he said surprised me with its simplicity.

(Do something kind for someone else,) he said. (In your case, put aside your discomfort and do something nice for Rachel. What does she want, Tobias? Surely you know something that would make her happy, even if only for a while; if you do that, I promise you will feel better.) He paused. (Well, you would if you were an _Andalite,_) he corrected himself, then gave me the Andalite version of a smile, the one they do by crinkling their main eyes and curving their stalk eyes. (But you humans and we Andalites are alike in many ways – maybe it will work for you.)

(You know what, Ax? I think it just might. Thanks.) I took off and headed home to get some sleep, already making plans for the next day.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I was excited, so I woke up even earlier than I normally did. The dark purple of the night sky was beginning to lighten, as if it were a bruise that was healing before my eyes. The sun had not yet peeked over the horizon, and the prey animals in my meadow were using the shift change between the night and day predators in order to scavenge what food they could. There really wasn't enough light to hunt by, but I managed to snag an unsuspecting field mouse, anyway. I hurriedly finished my meal, anxious to get my day started.

'_Ax was right,_' I told myself as I made the short trip to his patch of land. '_Just _thinking _about doing something nice for Rachel is making me feel better. Too bad I don't have any money to spend on her._' That was actually why I was stopping by Ax's first – there was about five bucks in quarters left in our newspaper fund, and I was going to borrow it. I knew it wasn't enough to buy Rachel anything or do anything incredibly fun with, but at least I could buy her a burger and a Coke. I could make the gesture. Also, I needed one of the bus tokens we had there.

Ax was just about to leave for his morning ritual, which he did by the stream about a hundred yards from his scoop. As I morphed to human and raided the stash of clothing we kept at the scoop, I lamented the fact that I was only going to have five dollars. Ax offhandedly said, (Oh, I have human money. I do not believe it is as valuable as our quarters, but you are welcome to it.) He pointed to a weather-beaten, watertight yellow case in the corner of the scoop.

I opened the case, which was apparently somebody's survival kit they'd left behind after camping. Inside was a small flare gun with flares, monofilament fishing line, hooks, iodine tablets to purify water, and yes – there in the corner of the box was a folded stack of bills. I quickly counted it – a hundred and thirty-three dollars. "Ax, this is _way _more than the quarters." I tucked two of the twenties in my jeans pocket and explained to him the values on the bills.

(Ridiculous,) he scoffed. (Why would you humans value a renewable resource like paper more highly than a finite resource like metal? It makes no sense.)

I thought about it and agreed with him. "Whether it makes sense or not, you just saved my butt, Ax. Thanks a lot." I put on a pair of the cheap, dollar store flip-flops we kept in a milk crate by his books. "I'll see you later on."

(Wait, Tobias! Take the watch,) he opened a drawer and handed me the cheap Timex. In my hurry to get to Rachel, I'd forgotten it. I set the alarm for an hour and forty-five minutes and set off toward the edge of the woods at a brisk walk.

I resisted the urge to whistle as I broke the tree line and made my way to the bus stop. Had I felt this good since becoming an Animorph? Maybe, but I couldn't remember when. I had forty bucks in my pocket and nothing but good intentions for Rachel. "Morning, sir!" I said cheerily to the bus driver as I boarded the empty bus, and he shot me a dirty look in return. I checked the watch – it _was _barely after six am. Maybe a little early for cheerful "good mornings." Unperturbed, I took a seat and bounced impatiently until I got to the stop closest to Rachel's house.

The sun was up as my flip-flops smacked the sidewalk. It was weird to be walking _anywhere_; for a while now, most of my destinations had been a short flight away. While it was inconvenient, in a way, it felt right. I mean, I know I'm human, so of course being a human should feel natural to me…but it doesn't, most of the time. Not anymore. The birds in Rachel's sleepy subdivision seemed to urge me on, chirping happily, far away from the predators that would kill and eat them. Predators like me.

When I got to Rachel's house, I faltered a little – it was way before her family would be waking up on a Sunday. It only slowed me down for a second – I looked around, saw that no one was even outside, and jumped over the privacy fence between her front and back yards. I went around back to where her window was, and I called out in thought-speech. (Hey, Rachel! It's me – can you wake up?)

To my surprise, barely after the words had left my head, she was waving the Christmas sock like a flag from her window. I smiled and even chuckled a little – man, if I miss anything about being human, it's being able to laugh when something funny happens. (Not this time. Look down,) I called to her.

She did, sticking the whole top half of her body out of her window. When she saw me, I knew I'd made the right call by listening to Ax's advice. Her face broke out into the sunniest grin I've ever seen, and I swear my heart skipped at least one beat. "Be right down," she whispered loudly, still grinning insanely. I took a mental snapshot of that moment, of her leaning out of her bedroom window, the morning sun bouncing off of her and making her radiant.

As I waited for her, all of the nervousness that had been in the back of my mind went away. Before I'd arrived, I'd been thinking about what we could do that Rachel would consider fun. I was worried that I was making the wrong choice, that I'd been right before, and we shouldn't be human around each other. Not at a time like this. But the way she smiled at me before disappearing back into her bedroom to get ready convinced me that I'd been wrong. And I realized that, no matter what we ended up doing, just the effort to be together would be enough to make the day a success.

Yeah. I might pay for it later, emotionally…but for now, giving Rachel something that she wanted was something I could do. And I would.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Rachel's house was only about a couple of dozen blocks from the beach, so we decided to walk. At first, she almost insisted on the bus; she was worried about my morphing time limit. I just laughed easily and told her that since I wasn't going to be overly worried about morphing today, neither should she. I had already mentally committed myself to as many human-to-hawk-back-to-human morphs as it took to make Rachel's day. She had just smiled and grabbed my hand, swinging it back and forth as we walked.

Holding hands is, as far as I know, uniquely human. Maybe monkeys do it, I don't know; they're the only other animals on Earth who could, if they wanted to. I assume, if monkeys _do _hold hands, that it doesn't hold the same significance for them. Maybe that sounds like an elitist way to think, but I learned a long time ago that giving human qualities to an animal when they aren't really there is a stupid and possibly dangerous thing to do. It was Cassie who taught me that.

It was hard to believe that such a small thing could elicit such a strong reaction, even out of my own, human body. If kissing is the physical manifestation of love, then hand-holding must be born out of comfort. That was the feeling I got more than any other as Rachel and I walked through the sunny weather – comfort. I don't get a whole lot of that out in my meadow, and it was very, very nice.

We talked about a lot of things on our walk to the beach, but for once, there wasn't any mention of the Yeerks. We talked about her classes and about the other Animorphs. She told me about the new, annoying habits her sister Jordan was picking up now that she was moving into the Land of Being a Teenager, and I laughed and sympathized at all the right places. She told me about getting back into gymnastics; she complained and deprecated herself nonstop, but I could tell from the way she talked about it that she really loved the sport. I was glad that she was at least giving it another go.

When we were close enough to the beach to see the first thin sheets of sand blowing across the road, she seemed to realize something. "Crap! Tobias, I've been totally talking about myself this whole time. How annoying," she shook her head, and she really _did _look annoyed with herself. My laugh at this one came even more naturally than the others.

"Get real. What else are we going to talk about? My favorite spot to find mice? Ax's take on the morning news? Don't worry about it – hearing you describe some normalcy makes _me _feel normal, and it's great." I was being completely honest, too.

She grinned, and it was somehow both thankful and rueful at the same time. "Yeah, I guess. Only I _do _want to know what's going on with you, Tobias. Even if you think it might be boring for me, it's your life. I want to know about it."

I grinned back, worried that I might be doing it wrong and showing too many teeth, but her smile never changed. "I'll make you a deal – if something more exciting than picking off rodents for breakfast ever comes up, you'll be the first to know." She laughed indulgently and squeezed my hand.

I was still focused on her voice as she described a T.V. movie she'd seen recently when she abruptly stopped. She stopped talking and walking and even dropped my hand. Belatedly, I looked up and ahead of us as she said, "What the heck is going on down here?"

I hadn't noticed before, because human eyes are awful. I tend not to focus on things more than twenty feet away in human morph, because straining to make out detail would give me a headache. I might compare the difference between hawk and human vision like this – it would be like somebody who's worn corrective glasses for years suddenly losing them. No, that's not extreme enough. It would be like an able-bodied person waking up without any arms or legs. I really felt that crippled in my human morph, in terms of eyesight.

Now that I was paying attention, I could see the blue-painted sawhorses strung up with yellow police tape. The barricade started before the wood of the boardwalk, and there was already a large crowd of people gathered against it. Lots of cameras. I instinctively grabbed Rachel's hand and led her along the length of the barricade without ever getting too close; she let me lead, but she also had her head craned to try and see through the throng of people.

Eventually we got far enough down the beach to where they were letting people back onto the boardwalk. I started walking for a crowded outdoor café that was settled a few feet from the sand, and for the first time Rachel actually tugged back. She'd realized that I meant to take us away from the crime scene, and she bucked. "No, hold on. I want to go over there and see what's going on – it might have something to do with the – the you-know-whos," she cut herself short of the word "Yeerk" as she realized how crowded the boardwalk was.

"We _are _going to find out what's going on – come on," I urged her toward the crowded eatery. "We don't have to get so close – not that we could. Too many people, too many cops. I'll bet you my tail feathers the waiters at this place can tell us more than the cops ever would." That was one thing you could count on – if something out of the ordinary happens around someone's job, they'll 1) know all about it, and 2) be more than willing to tell anyone who will listen.

She looked at me almost admiringly. "You know, you're pretty smart sometimes."

I blushed, taking a stool at the counter as Rachel sat in the one beside me. "Nah, I just pay attention."

I didn't even pick up the menu as the waitress came over to get our order. I knew exactly what I wanted – a big, fat salad with everything on it. Hawks can't eat vegetation, they don't need it and they can't digest it anyway. There was a part of me that missed big leaves of crunchy lettuce, crisp tomato slices, and onions. Not to mention the bacon bits, croutons, dressing, and whatever else I could pile on to ruin the innate healthiness of the meal. After I got done ordering, Rachel just asked the girl to make it two of them. She was looking at me like she was seeing me for the first time today. "You really are falling into this pretty nicely, you know."

"Falling into what?" I asked as I sipped the Sprite the waitress brought me, and I was transported to another planet by its coldness and sweetness. Transported to another time, at the very least.

She waved a hand at the crowded café around us. "This. Being normal. You're better at it than you think."

I smiled – that was very nearly the whole point of the day. "Hey, just because I spend 99% of my time with feathers doesn't mean I'm not a real boy."

She grinned and lightly poked my nose at the Pinocchio reference. "I know you are. I'll always know who you are," she said, maybe a little more seriously than the situation warranted. I leaned back as the waitress set our massive salads in front of us. As she went to leave, I caught her sleeve.

She turned back with a "what, now?" look on her face, and I couldn't help it. I laughed at her. "No, everything's great, the service especially." She relaxed and even smiled, now that she knew I wasn't another jerk customer with an unreasonable demand. I cocked my thumb at the bustling scene behind us. "I was just wondering if you heard anything about that."

As I'd known she would, she launched into the tale of what she knew of the situation. She even sat on the empty stool beside me to tell me. I _thought _I felt Rachel tense up beside me when the girl sat down and put her hand on mine to tell the story – but that was stupid. Rachel knew way better than to be jealous, and I was only getting the information we both wanted.

"I can't believe you guys don't know, yet." She spoke like she was talking to both Rachel and I, but her eyes didn't leave mine. She lowered her voice, for effect, I guess. "They found a body on the beach earlier, buried in the sand. They also found another one, about five miles that way," she pointed north. "They think it's a serial killer."

"Why do they think that?" I asked. I didn't know a lot about serial killers, but I knew that two murders was a little premature to slap the label on it.

"Because the girls that were murdered could have been twins. Sisters, at least. Both young, white, blond, pretty…" her eyes flicked to Rachel as she described the victims, then back to me. "The police have already spoken to the girls who work on the boardwalk," she gestured so I'd know that included her. "They're telling us not to work past dark if we can help it, and to go home in pairs. They wouldn't do that if they thought it was just a one-time thing, would they?"

"No, I guess they wouldn't," I agreed. I let the girl get back to work and turned to Rachel. "Nothing to worry about," I assured her, and dug into my salad.

She didn't start eating, which made me stop. She was just looking at me. "Nothing to worry about?" she repeated.

I flushed as I realized how I had sounded. "You know what I mean – nothing to worry about for _us. _It's not the you-know-whats. Just a human thing."

"Just a human thing?" she repeated again. "Tobias, how can we _not _do something about this?"

Now it was my turn to stare. "You know what we have coming up, and how crazy it is. You want to add something else on top of it? We're not detectives, Rachel, and we're not the cops. Let them handle it."

She grimaced, like the thought of leaving it alone made her sick, but she slowly started eating. I tried to spark the conversation a few times, but she was off in her own little world. I sighed, because I knew where this was going. I had to remind myself what the day was all about – making Rachel happy. If investigating some murders would make her happy, who was I to say no?

I pushed my bowl away after I was finished. I looked at Rachel, who was still lost in thought. "When you're done, what do you think about getting some wings? Maybe we could float over the crime scene, see if we see anything the cops missed. Maybe we can help."

The smile broke out of her pensive expression like wildfire. "You mean it?" she asked. "Yeah! Let's definitely do it!" She seemed to temper her own enthusiasm for a second. "Unless, you know, you had big plans for today or something…"

I instinctively leaned toward her and kissed her cheek. She was surprised, but still quick – she turned her head and caught my lips with hers. The kiss was short, almost perfunctory…but it was also one of the greatest things I'd ever experienced. Her eyes were electric when she broke away from me gently. She seemed to consider me, then laughed. Loudly. Two guys behind us turned to see what was so funny.

"Just when I think you're going to keep making things harder than they have to be, you go and surprise me. Thanks."

"Thank Ax. He's the one who convinced me to break out of my shell and spend some human time with you," I said, unwilling to take the credit for the amazing way things were going.

"I will." She leaned in for another kiss, and pecked my lips with hers again. There was no obnoxiousness about it, no overdone passion, but in a way, that made it all the more real to me. "I'll thank him and anybody else who might have had anything to do with today."

I laughed again. "It's not over. We still have a crime to solve – how could the day get any better?" I was joking.

"Yeah," she agreed.

She wasn't joking.

**A/N – **Just want to say thank you to everyone who is reviewing! There are a lot of guest reviews coming in, and I wish I knew how to message you so I could thank you guys personally. I guess this will have to do – thank you! I hope everybody continues enjoying!


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

The girl at the café had been right – the poor girl who'd ended up some psycho's victim on the beach _did _look a lot like Rachel. Or rather she had, before…but that part's not entirely relevant to the story, and to be honest, I just don't want to think about it.

Rachel was directly over the crime scene. I was staggered out to the east a good ways; if I've told them once, I've told them a thousand times – you don't have to be right on top of something to see it in raptor morph. They listen to that about as well as they listen to my advice on cross-breezes and nor'westerlies. (So, see anything out of the ordinary?) I called to Rachel.

(Other than the fact that someone went to town on a kid our age with a knife?) she sounded disgusted, but in control of herself. (I see a bunch of wannabe CSI detectives – the knock-off Ray-bans and tight blazers are a dead giveaway. Seriously, man, it's like eighty-five degrees out here, and you're wearing a nylon jacket?) She had that special tone of amused contempt that she seemed to save entirely for the fashion-impaired.

(Yeah, I don't see much, either,) I agreed, even though that hadn't been exactly what she had said. (I don't see any tire tracks, so whoever did it must have parked and carried the body. But I don't see any footprints, either, just the ones the cops have made, and they only used that one strip of sand.) But as I was talking, I was noticing something.

It wasn't exactly at the crime scene. Actually, the guy was almost directly under me, and I was a half a mile away. He was wearing a baseball cap, which made it tough to get a look at him. What caught my attention was the glint of sunlight off of lenses – he was looking out over the crime scene with binoculars. What was weird about it was he hadn't gotten out of his car, like the other bystanders. Some people were standing on things, trying to get a better look, but this guy didn't even want to roll down his windows.

Then I started paying attention to the car itself. It was a rental, according to the sticker on the bumper. It was a no-color gray with slightly-tinted windows. None of these things on their own were overly suspicious; the heeby-jeebies came when the man in the driver's seat lowered the binoculars for a second and I recognized the face. (Chapman!)

(What?) Rachel asked, already turning to head my way. (Chapman?)

(Yeah, down here. Spying on the crime scene. In a rental car. In disguise.)

(Okay, _that's _not shady,) Rachel said sarcastically. (But why is he here? It doesn't make sense, a high-profile Yeerk like him risking exposure out here at a big deal crime like this.)

(In a rental car, in disguise,) I reiterated. For some reason, that was bothering me way worse than the fact that he was here in the first place. (I mean, why not just drive out in his sedan? If anybody even noticed him, he could just claim to be here on behalf of the Sharing, and what a tragedy this is to the community or whatever.)

As I was talking and Rachel was drawing closer, Chapman started up the little rental car and left in a hurry. Luckily, he was heading north, and the wind was with us. It's pretty tough to try to keep up with a car, but when the wind is working in your favor and you've got some altitude, it's not impossible. Besides, he didn't go very far.

(The second crime scene?) Rachel blurted when she realized he had stopped on the fringes of a scene almost exactly like the first. (Okay, this goes beyond curiosity. Chapman definitely had something to do with this. And that means the Yeerks had something to do with it.)

Rachel has a very definite way of seeing the world – once she jumps to a conclusion, she sticks to it until she's proven wrong. I'm a little more open-minded when it comes to figuring out a puzzle. (It's starting to look that way,) I agreed. (But _why?_ Why is Chapman so interested in this? The Yeerks are the definition of the words "low profile." They're getting ready for the jewel heist of the century. Why would they risk that now with some senseless violence like this? Not to mention they've always preserved host bodies before – they might be cold, but they're not wasteful. These poor girls…wasteful is the only word for it.)

(That, and _evil_,) Rachel said darkly, but she didn't contradict anything I'd said. She knew I made some good points, but I know how Rachel works. She was looking for anything to back up her suspicions that the Yeerks were, for whatever reason, behind these horrible crimes.

Me? I was the opposite; I was almost positive that the Yeerks _weren't _behind this, despite Chapman's interest and creepy behavior. I've been a hawk for a while now, and I've seen things about humans that I'd never noticed, back when I was one.

As bad as the Yeerks are, they always have a reason for the atrocious stuff they do. They don't just randomly do anything. They came a long, long way to play this chess game of theirs, and they intend to win it. Every move is plotted out in advance.

I didn't say this to Rachel, but I knew the truth. _Humans _are the ones who commit violence and meanness for seemingly no reason at all. As horrible as the Yeerks are, I was convinced that only _homo sapien _had it in him to do something like this.

**A/N **– Thanks again to everyone reviewing! Especially Sweetbriar, love the detail of your reviews, really helps. _Please _don't add my fic to your alerts if you don't want to leave a word or two – it's crazy. You have to click the same button to do that as to review, and the review box is already up…if you like it enough to want to follow it, please write a few words with your thoughts in the box! Hope you're still enjoying!


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

I had been debating whether or not to bring up the mysterious murders myself at our weekly Sunday meeting at the barn, but I'd underestimated my friends' powers of observation.

Ax had actually been the one to mention it first. After I'd left for my day with Rachel, he'd gone ahead and bought the newspaper. He was already pretty ingrained in the habit, and he didn't want to miss the deluxe Sunday edition. Somehow, even though the murders had been discovered at approximately the same time the paper went to print, they were able to include a front page article about the killings and what they might mean.

Ax had been under the impression that a serial killer was a made-up monster, like Swamp Thing or the Boogeyman. As Marco explained to him everything he knew on the subject – which was a lot, but was also mostly made up junk from movies like _Silence of the Lambs_ – Ax thought he was being set up for a joke.

As with most things about us humans, Ax just didn't get it. He couldn't wrap his big Andalite brain around the concept that a person would go out killing strangers for no other reason than a sick urge and poor impulse control. (But surely the murdered humans have _some _connection with the killer – perhaps they had wronged him in some way that even you humans would consider insignificant. It does not make evolutionary sense for a creature to kill others of its kind with no motivation. No sense at all.)

Since Cassie's parents were both gone and I was in the rafters, keeping watch, Jake had elected to allow Ax to stay in his natural form. This was more for our benefit than for Ax's – the meetings went smoother and quicker when we weren't trying to figure out what Ax was saying through his "mouth-sounds" or attempting to stop him from tasting the "delicious-smelling" antibiotic ointments.

We were all present and waiting on Rachel, who had yet to arrive. I wasn't worried about her – of course it had crossed my mind that someone was out there killing girls who looked an awful lot like her, but they wouldn't have had a crack at her. Not today, at least. She and I had spent another hour spying on the crime scenes, and then I had escorted her home, myself. Her mom was out doing yard work and her sisters were playing on the lawn when I dropped her off; not exactly ideal circumstances for a serial killer to do his work.

As I was wondering what might be holding her up, I saw a car pull into Cassie's driveway. I recognized Rachel's mom behind the wheel before I realized it was her Mercedes sedan they were riding in. Rachel jumped out of the car next to Cassie's house and waved pointedly at her mom, who reluctantly pulled out of the driveway. Rachel walked like she was going to the house until her mom was out of sight, then changed direction for the barn. She was already complaining before she got past the open double doors.

"Ugh! Just when I need a little privacy…" she growled.

(What's up?) I asked her. She took time out of being annoyed to flash me a genuine smile and a wave. After that, her face went right back to being disgruntled, and I had to hold back a laugh.

"Oh, not much. Of course, my mom has all sorts of insider info on the killings, so she knows the victims slightly resemble me." In my opinion, the victims bore more than a slight resemblance, but I kept it to myself. "So of course, until they get caught, she's not going to let me out of her sight. She tried to tell me I wasn't allowed to come over here." I shook my head; nobody, not even Rachel's mom, was going to tell her she couldn't do something. Especially when it was official business. Rachel's next sentence confirmed that. "She had to settle for driving me over herself. She's picking me up, too."

(Erek's here,) I announced. If I hadn't been expecting it, it probably would have freaked me out. After Rachel's mom left, the air at the end of the gravel driveway had shimmered for a second, and all of a sudden a normal-looking teenager had appeared out of nowhere. He stuck his holographic hands in his holographic pockets and had sauntered over to where we were meeting.

"Hey, Erek," Jake said a second before he walked in. I noted that Jake sounded tired. Not like he just needed a good night's sleep, either; he sounded tired in that deep way, where you're worn out to your very bones. I didn't like that, especially with such a big mission coming up. "Hope you've got some good news."

Erek shook his head. "Not me. I have some news, but it's not exactly great."

"Erek, if you brought us good news, I'd have a heart attack on the spot. We live so far outside of the realm of good news that it's just a distant rumor to us," Marco joked.

Erek studied him for a second, then shrugged. "It's going to be Wednesday night. Thursday morning, actually; the robberies are scheduled for two in the AM."

Jake had his head resting on his arms, sitting in one of the recycled school desks Cassie's dad used to store gauze. He didn't look up as he asked, "Where?"

The others didn't catch it, but I did – Erek hesitated. He'd never had a problem telling us exactly what was up, even if it was dangerous or even borderline-hopeless. But this time, he hesitated, like he didn't want to tell us. That's when I knew it was bad. After he came out with it, the others knew it was bad, too.

"Meridian Mutual, Allendale Savings and Loan, Seabreeze Financial, and Armitage Mutual," he said.

Nobody said anything for a second. Cassie broke the silence. "Four? They're going to rob four bank vaults? All at the same time?"

Erek hesitated once again. "Yes. But those are all scheduled merely as back-ups and distractions. The police will be hard-pressed to cover four bank robberies at once." He took a moment to look at each of us significantly. "The real target is the DeBolt Diamond Exchange in the middle of town."

"DeBolt? Those guys have stores in every shopping center in the state. They're _the _diamond people," Marco said. "Makes sense that they'd have the best stuff – the Yeerks must have figured that out, too."

"Right," Erek agreed. "Whatever the Yeerks get out of the banks is just lagniappe. It means "extra," Ax," Erek smiled at Ax's confused look. "No, what they really want is at the diamond exchange."

"Okay, so that's good," Rachel said. "We ignore their bank jobs, because we already know they're just for a distraction. We take them on at the exchange."

Marco was already shaking his head disapprovingly. "No way. We're not supposed to know this – if we do that, they'll know we've got a mole on the inside." If Erek was offended at being called a mole, he didn't show it.

Jake agreed. "The whole point of this is to look like we're just reacting, trying our best to stop them."

"Why?" Cassie asked. Everybody turned to look at her, and she blushed a little at the attention, but she went on. "If they're going to get these amazing diamonds and use them in new weapons, why does it matter if we appear to be trying to stop them? Won't that just convince them even more that they're on the right track?"

"That," Erek said, sounding satisfied, "is _exactly _the conclusion we hope the Yeerks come to."

Erek seemed like he was being evasive, to me. (Same question – why?) I asked.

He smiled at me. "I can't tell you. It's not important to your end of the mission, and you can't tell what you don't know."

"Ahh," Marco said. "So _that's _what all the secrecy is about. You Chee are going to do something about this, but you need us to do the dirty work. You need us to bleed and maybe die while you're involved in the _clean _part of the sabotage." The way he said the word _clean _was almost a curse.

Erek's hologram projected a cold and almost angry expression. "I need you to do what you are capable of, as we will do what we are capable of. Don't underestimate the risk to the Chee in this mission. We will be in touch, and we'll let you know if the plan changes. Be ready." He turned and left the meeting without another word.

The others all started the usual point-and-counterpoint argument that followed new information. I stayed out of it, not because I had nothing to contribute, but because two things were bothering me that the others hadn't considered.

Problem number one – how were the six of us going to effectively cover five different locations at the same time? Especially since there was going to be fighting at each and every site.

Problem number two – even though it didn't seem related, I was worried about the whole serial killer thing, not to mention the fact that Chapman had been at the crime scenes. Even though I was sure the Yeerks didn't have anything to do with that, I still was bothered that I couldn't think of an angle for Chapman to be playing by being there. _Something _was going on. I just didn't have enough pieces of the puzzle to see what it was, yet.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

After the meeting broke up and Rachel's mom picked her up, I used the remaining daylight to go back to my meadow and hunt. After I ate, even though the sun was setting, I decided to go for a flight. I didn't really have a destination in mind, and the rapidly-cooling air made flying seem like more of a chore than a joy. I noticed that along main roads, especially the ones closest to the beach, the police had set up roadblocks. _'And just what do they think that is going to do?' _I thought. '_Do they think they're going to catch the killer driving around with dead bodies in his backseat?_' I didn't know a whole lot about the inner workings of the mind of a serial killer, but I assumed that most of them were smarter than that. After all, most of them got away with their crimes for a long time before being caught. The cases I actually knew about – high-profile stuff like Ted Bundy – made it seem like the killers _let _themselves get caught, maybe out of sheer boredom.

Because I wasn't tired yet and because the chill had made aimless flying nearly impossible, I swung by Ax's. To my surprise, he already had a visitor. He and Marco were completely oblivious to my arrival as they fooled with an ancient-looking personal computer in the corner of the scoop.

If I were human, I would have cleared my throat. (Hey guys. What's up?) I asked.

Ax continued to concentrate on the guts of the computer tower. Marco turned and gave me a nod. "Not much. I think I've managed to scrounge everything Ax needs for an internet connection. We're just trying to get it to work."

(Cool,) I said, thinking it would be convenient to be able to get the news online. And, not to mention, for free – I was assuming that an Andalite with knowledge of the finer workings of Z-space could manage to pirate a free internet connection.

"I'm too worked up to sit around at home," Marco explained without me asking. He really must have been, too, because he almost never chose to spend time with Ax, just the two of them. Other than their love of technology and its applications, the two just didn't have anything in common. The fact that Ax didn't get his jokes most of the time would have been enough to keep Marco out of his space.

Marco wasn't my favorite person in the world. Don't get me wrong, I respected him plenty. I think what used to bother me most about him was, even though he complained the whole time, he was able to deal with the whole Yeerk situation better than me. If any of us had a shot at coming out of the other side of this war still normal, it was Marco.

On the other hand, Marco was the one most likely to figure out abstract puzzles. Puzzles like the one involving a disguised Chapman at the scenes of some serial murders. While I hadn't wanted to pile my general uneasiness about the situation on the others, I thought that maybe with Marco's help, I could pin down why it seemed like such a big deal. Without consciously deciding to do so, I told Marco the whole story about what Rachel and I had observed earlier that day.

He listened thoughtfully and didn't interrupt me once. Like I said, Marco can be a major pain in the butt. He can also surprise you with his businesslike manner right when you need it the most. After I finished with my story, he leaned back in the wicker chair in the corner of the scoop and put one finger on his chin, deep in thought. I gave him a minute before saying, (So? What do you think? Am I just being paranoid, worrying about this right now?)

"Nope," he replied instantly. "It means something. You're right to be worried." He got up and paced – something Marco did when he was really working through something. He seemed to think better on his feet. "The Yeerks have no angle on this," he said, mainly to himself. "So _why _was Chapman there? And why did he switch cars and wear a ballcap?"

I felt a sense of relief when Marco said that – it reinforced my belief that _that _was the part of the mystery that was important. Chapman had wanted to see, but not be seen. There was a reason for that.

Suddenly, Marco stopped pacing. His expression looked like he was maybe on the verge of figuring it out, but he couldn't quite get there. He couldn't have been any less interested in Ax's computer project anymore – I'd given him a much harder and more real problem to deal with. "Do you have an owl morph?" he asked me suddenly, and I replied in the negative. "Let's swing by Cassie's barn and get you one – I saw that she has two of them at the Center." He was already shrinking, with feather patterns starting to outline themselves on his skin.

(Okay, sure,) I agreed. (But why? Do you know something I don't?)

Too far along in his morph to make actual speech, he switched to thought-speech. (No, I don't _know _anything…but I've got a strong suspicion about what might be going on. We need to check out a few things before I'll feel comfortable saying it out loud, though.)

Ax had been halfway paying attention to us while we talked; now, he turned both stalk eyes to us. (Will you need backup? I am willing to go, too.) His "tone" suggested he'd rather stay and work on his computer, and Marco picked it up, too.

(Nah, it's cool,) Marco told him. (We're just doing some outdoor recon. We won't get close enough to anything for anyone to be in danger.) Fully Great Horned Owl, he spread his impressive wings and got airborne. (Let's go figure this out, Tobias.)

**A/N – **Just want to make sure to thank Theanimorpherz for their detailed feedback. It really goes beyond helping the story, to the point of helping the writer, lol. Thank you for your input, it makes writing this story fun again. If even a quarter of the people on ffn would do this simple, simple thing, it would make the site a much better place…*sigh.* And if fish had bicycles, every river would be the freaking Tour de France. Anyway, thanks again, Theanimorpherz!


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Now that I had an owl morph, if it was possible for me to be even more afraid of them, I was.

They say sharks are the perfect ocean predator. That, unlike most species, sharks haven't changed much over time. Nature got them right the first time around.

Sharks might rule the ocean, but owls are the perfect airborne, nighttime predator. Completely silent. Deadly beak and talons, just like my hawk body. The eyes were amazing – they saw everything that my own hawk eye saw, only they did it without any light. Any stray photon of light was caught in the owl's huge eyeballs, which were basically natural night vision binoculars. Yeah, now that I'd morphed one, I saw how easy it would be for the owl that lived in my meadow to take me out. The only thing that made me feel at all at ease about it was that my owl brain didn't seem to consider the various roosting birds-of-prey as food. They might fight back. The owl wouldn't go after something that could hurt it, not if there was any other choice.

The first thing Marco had wanted to check out had nothing at all to do with the killing spree that our town was in. He wanted to find out where all the banks Erek had listed were located. They were spread out from each other, maybe a few miles apart, but Marco had pointed out that they were all on the east side of town. On our way back to the other side, where the beach was, we passed over the DeBolt Diamond Exchange.

The security was over the top, as you might expect of a building that houses billions of dollars in stones. Three perimeter fences, each electrified and topped with barbed wire, ringed the compound. Guard stations were everywhere, and the guards were seriously armed. I don't mean handguns or whatever – everybody we saw carried fully-automatic, tactical rifles with every bell and whistle you can imagine. The kind the military would like to have, but could never have afforded.

The building itself was constructed of steel and thick concrete. I could tell that from the way the thermals were still coming off of the building, even in the cold night. Only steel-reinforced buildings were able to hold the heat of the day for so long after the sun had set. I voiced some of my concern over the security; we were supposed to be fighting there in less than four days.

(Well, at least this time, that's the Yeerks' problem,) Marco said. (We'll just follow them in, I guess.)

We continued on our night flight. Marco wanted to check out the roadblocks I'd told him about earlier. We forgot all about the roadblocks as we came within a few miles of the beach; even from this distance, we could see the two different clusters of flashing lights. The roadblocks had been abandoned.

(I've got a _way _bad feeling about this,) Marco said as we headed to the closer of the two clusters of lights. Once we got overhead, we could see a crime scene almost exactly like the one Rachel and I had visited earlier. I even recognized a couple of the same detectives, looking haggard and done-in. The only real difference was while the first one had been on the beach itself, this one was about a half a mile inland, on one of the backroads that led to all the private drives.

They were just zipping up the body bag when Marco and I got there, but not before I saw a young, pretty face ringed with blond hair. (It's really a serial killer. An honest-to-God serial killer, here in our town,) I said. I felt like somebody had punched me – didn't we have enough to deal with? Was this seriously happening?

(Yep. And he's active, too.) Marco was using his "expert" tone. (Four murders in twenty-four hours? Man, that's unheard of, especially for a new killer.) Without warning, he peeled off and headed back east.

Belatedly, I turned to follow him. (Whoa, where are you going?) I asked him.

(Back to Ax's. I've seen all I need to see – now it's time to sit down and put the puzzle together.)

I was lost – what had he seen that I'd missed? I was no closer to figuring this out than before I'd told him about it. I decided I'd learn for myself soon enough.

When we got back to the scoop, Marco and I demorphed. My changes were far less dramatic than his, so I was finished a full minute before he was. Ax was still tinkering with his computer, but he was also interested in what we'd found out. (I don't know,) I said, a little grumpy. (I'm assuming Marco's going to get around to telling us.)

Marco barely noticed – he was in flat-out detective mode. The first thing he asked for was a local map. When Ax found it for him, he sat down at the coffee table with it and a permanent marker. He quickly marked the banks' locations on the map. Then he moved to the other side of the map and placed crosses over the murder scenes. Finally, in the middle of it all, he circled the diamond exchange. Then he sat back and looked at it for a long time.

I was about to tell him to spit it out when he looked up at me. "Tell me you see what I see," he said, motioning to the map.

(Sorry, but I'm missing it,) I said, trying not to sound frustrated.

"All the banks are here," he pointed them out. "Here's all the murder scenes – all on the other side of town, all concentrated in the same general area." He waited, but when I didn't say anything, he slapped the map. "Come on, Tobias! What's every cop in town's first priority right now?"

(The murders, duh,) I said…and as I said it, I had the same epiphany that had struck Marco hours ago. (The murders! It looked like every cop in town was out tonight, all investigating.)

Marco smiled. "You got it. Dick, tell our contestant what he's won!" he yelled in his best game show voice. When neither me or Ax laughed, he said, "Ah, you guys are too much. You know I love it when you get the joke, but you're embarrassing me."

(Marco? Let's talk this out, _then _you can tell all the dumb jokes you want,) I said patiently. He got back to business.

"Right. So here's what I'm thinking. The Yeerks thought of the one thing that might keep the cops minds off of cop stuff – a serial killer. Every cop on the beat is going to be looking for Manson, not bank robbers. But that's just the beginning. If I had to guess, I'd say we're going to see a lot more of these in the next few days. Probably most of them are going to be discovered on Wednesday night and Thursday morning."

(Right when the Yeerks need a distraction the most,) I agreed. (If they find six dumped bodies at midnight on the west side of town, how many cops are going to still be patrolling the east side? The side with all the banks?)

"Bingo. Sure, the alarms will come in, and they'll send as many cops as they can…but it's my guess that most of them will be tied up in crime scene security. And really, what's more important? Catching an out-of-control serial killer, or stopping a couple of bank robberies?"

I would have slapped my forehead, if I'd had hands. Or a forehead. (And while the few cops that are available deal with that…the diamond exchange gets hit. They've got their own security, but they won't be able to call for any backup. Not any that could get there in time. The Yeerks get their diamonds almost uncontested.) Something else was bugging me though, and since we were already talking it out… (Why are all the girls carbon-copies of Rachel, though? Is that just some weird coincidence?)

Marco shook his head condescendingly. His Latin features were dark and unreadable. "Come on, dude. If it was some illegal Mexicans coming up dead, or some inner-city black kids, nobody would care. You put a young white girl with blue eyes on a milk carton? People lose their minds."

It made me sad to realize that Marco was speaking the truth. People liked to think they were more fair-minded than that, but they aren't. Not for the first time, I wondered if people were even worth saving.

Marco folded up the map. "Ax-man, I'm gonna borrow this, okay?" Ax distractedly agreed, then actually paid attention to us.

(Tobias? Marco? I know I do not understand what is going on, but…do you require my assistance?) He sounded hopeful, and, unless I was imagining things, a little left out. I was about to invite him along the next leg of our adventure, but I realized I didn't even know what Marco had planned next. He answered for me.

"Nah, we got it, Ax. It's just some wacky human behavior that doesn't make any sense." Ax nodded as if that answer satisfied him and got back to work on his computer. Marco looked at me. "I know it's getting late, but I think this is something we ought to take to Jake. Like, now. You down for one more morph?" I said sure, and we morphed.

Then we flew.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Marco's dad was taking his turn working the graveyard shift, so after we woke Jake up, that was where we flew.

Even though he'd woken up, morphed, flew over to Marco's, and demorphed, it seemed like Jake was still half asleep. He was snappy and cranky, the way he always is when he gets jerked out of a deep sleep. Marco either didn't notice or didn't care as he forced Jake to acknowledge everything we'd found out.

"Do you see it?" Marco was asking him. "A human serial killer…that's bad enough. But it's the Yeerks behind this. They're killing _kids_, Jake; kids our age. They've murdered at least four so far, and I'll bet you my CD collection there's going to be a lot more before Thursday."

Jake rubbed his forehead, like he had a migraine all of a sudden. I felt the same way. Marco wouldn't let up, though. "I know we've got a big, big mission coming up, man. But I don't see how we can ignore this. The Yeerks are killing innocent kids, and they're doing it for a _distraction._"

As Marco emphasized his point – which, I guess, was a good one – Jake groaned. "I know! I get it, I'm not stupid!" he snapped. I could see him visibly trying to calm himself down, and Marco wasn't helping.

"You can get mad if you want to, but this isn't just some arbitrary thing that doesn't directly involve us. There's another angle we've got to worry about." He took a deep breath. "They're getting these girls from somewhere, man. They don't come from Murder Victims 'R Us. And if they're snatching up blond haired, blue eyed girls, we have to worry about Rachel. She sure as hell won't worry about herself."

"What do you want me to do about it?" Jake asked. "You want me to order Rachel to stay in her house until Thursday? You want to go play detective and catch whatever monster – Yeerk _or _human – that's doing this? Let me ask you this – did you ever consider what would happen if we _could _catch the guy? What would we do with him? 'Oh hey, officer. Yeah, it's me, the tiger. I collared your bad guy.'" We all laughed a little at the ridiculousness of the image. "And here's another one – Andalite freedom fighters wouldn't care about this. If we stop it, they're going to know something's up. They might come up with another plan to get their diamonds, one that we can't try to stop."

Marco closed his eyes. "I'm about to say something that I still can't believe." He seemed to wrestle with it for a second, then he came out and said it. "Honestly, I think we _can _catch the guy. We've even got the bait." I felt my blood start to boil when I realized it was Rachel he was talking about. "And as for what to do with him when we get him?" Another pause. "We kill him."

Jake's head snapped up so fast I could hear the vertebrae in his neck crack. "_What?_" he asked, astonished.

"I know," Marco agreed. "It's cold. It's probably crazy. But seriously, what's the lesser of two evils, here? We kill one guy, one innocent guy who's probably host to the real killer, the Yeerk. We do that, and we save maybe twenty kids. Maybe _forty_." Jake was just staring at him, his mouth open in shock. "Look, I'm open to suggestions, man. But this is the most efficient solution."

Jake was trying to settle down. He thought for a minute, and then he stood. "First of all, good work, you two. I'm impressed with everything you were able to find out." He checked the wall clock – 1:12 AM. "That said, I am not even going to _consider _talking about this…this…_plan _of yours. Not right now. We'll meet tomorrow after school – if you want to bring this up to everybody, be my guest. We can talk about it and vote on it as a group. But right now, I gotta get _home_, man. Even though this serial killer seems to favor girls, my parents are still pretty freaked out. It's got them thinking about how maybe they should keep a better eye on me, and that's no good."

Marco wore a pained expression. "I understand, dude. But to wait until after school to talk about it…man, there could be ten more dead girls by then. And whose head would that be on? Mine. Because I knew about it, knew how I could stop it, and did nothing."

I decided it was time to speak my mind. (Marco, that's admirable. That's a good-hearted way to think about it. But we need you back to your regular way of thinking – we cannot risk the big picture for the small scale. We might be able to save a dozen girls. Heck, maybe a hundred. But at what cost? The Yeerks could end up getting their diamonds. They could test them out, decide that they're worth it, and torch the planet. Then who did we help? Those girls' lives we saved will be pointless, because they'll be just as dead as if we let the killer have them.)

Marco looked disgruntled, but he knew what I was saying was true. Hell, he'd probably already thought of it, himself. Maybe he just couldn't stand the thought of the Yeerks playing serial killer for the simple reason of distraction. I know that's what bothered _me _most about it. I mean, as crazy as it is, you could consider the anomaly of a serial killer – a real one – as a force of nature. Something we don't understand, something that's hard to fight or defend against.

This was different. This was just a game within a game the Yeerks were playing. They were moving their human pawns around the board, sacrificing some of them because it would give them a technical advantage. But it wasn't pawns they were sacrificing, it was human lives. Girls with moms and dads and brothers and sisters. Girls with futures, snatched away because some space slugs needed a distraction.

Jake shook me out of my thoughts. I noticed he was already ninety percent owl. (We talk about it tomorrow after school. We put everything we know on the table, and we decide what to do about everything. As a group,) he emphasized, and Marco nodded his agreement. (All right. See you guys later.) Without a sound, he lifted off of Marco's bean bag chair and was through the window and into the night.

I really didn't feel like talking about it anymore, either. It was too much. (See ya, Marco,) I said before following Jake out into the darkness.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

It turned out we didn't have to wait until after school to meet. The whole town was in a frenzy, and school had been cancelled indefinitely. Everybody with a badge was on duty, stopping traffic at roadblocks and going door to door, looking for anybody who knew anything at all. It looked like, as far as distracting the cops went, the Yeerks had pulled it off in spades.

Jake, Rachel, and Cassie's parents all had to work, but they had also sworn to ground every single one of them until they were in college if they found out they'd left their houses. So anyway, an hour or so after the 'rents had gone to work, we met in the field on Cassie's land. Marco's dad was trying to catch up on his sleep, so he was able to sneak out and join us, too.

Marco put his plan out there, but he'd amended it since the previous night. "In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that my first idea was to kill this serial killer once we caught him. I thought about it all night, and I realized that really isn't necessary." Cassie looked deeply troubled, the way she did when one of her friends suggested something she hadn't thought they were previously capable of. Rachel looked eager. Jake just looked tired.

"In all likelihood, the actual person isn't Michael Myers. It's gotta be the Yeerk," Marco said.

"How horrible," Cassie muttered. "To be a controller is one thing. But to be a controller and to have to watch as the Yeerk committed these horrible crimes…my God. How terrible."

"Yeah, it's awful," Marco said, trying not to sound demeaning. "But here's the up-side – we can do something about it. We know who he targets and we know where he works. After all of the freaking out going on, I think he's going to have a harder time finding victims. Well, we can give him an easy one." Rachel cackled as she realized what he had in mind.

"Oh yeah. Another helpless little blond…wait, that _was _a little girl, right? Where'd she go, and why is there an extremely mad grizzly in her place?" she imitated how the plan might go, and even Cassie had to laugh a little at her enthusiasm. Or maybe it was the image of an evil predator getting the tables turned on them.

Jake looked done in. "Say we _do _go through with this, even though we've got something much bigger going on. Say we risk that for this. You still haven't said what we do with the guy, Marco."

He shrugged. "It's easy, actually. It's not like we've never starved a Yeerk out of a host before. We can even use the same shed in the woods that we used for Jake. He can't morph, so all we have to do is tie him up good and leave him there. Ax comes back after the diamond thing and cuts him loose. We don't have to explain anything to him – the guy will be so grateful to be free he won't ask questions, anyway. And if he ever gets retaken, the Yeerks will think it was just us Andalites screwing up their distraction." He looked pretty proud of himself as he finished.

Nobody said anything for a minute, and I knew they were all doing the same thing I was doing – playing the scenario out in their minds, trying to find a problem with Marco's plan. The funny thing is, it was actually a habit we'd all picked up from Marco himself. Finally, Jake nodded.

"That could work. It's conditional, though, and we vote on it before we start planning it out. The big condition is this – Rachel, are you willing to take the risk?" She opened her mouth to say yes immediately, but Jake cut her off before she could. "I want you to keep in mind that this is a lot more dangerous than you might think. Say the guy doesn't kidnap his victims first. What if he just walks up behind them and starts knifing them before they even know what happened? He doesn't have to necessarily give you the chance to morph to something dangerous."

Before Rachel could answer, I spoke up. (We don't really have to worry about that. Normal victims don't have an eye in the sky looking out for them.) Rachel smiled up at me and tipped me a wink.

Marco looked less than confident for the first time. "That could be a problem. I'm counting on the fact that the killer will want to get her someplace quiet before getting all stabby." Cassie looked sick again, but Marco either didn't notice or didn't consider it important. He looked directly at me. "Are you going to be able to stand by and let somebody try to snatch Rachel? He may actually be able to get his hands on her before we can take him down. We _have _to keep in mind that the guy is probably innocent – we don't want a hawk blinding the poor guy if we can help it."

I thought about it; the thought of anybody, Yeerk or otherwise, grabbing Rachel with the intention to kill her… (I don't know,) I said honestly. (I don't like it.) I decided if I was going to be honest, I'd better be all the way honest. (Actually, I hate it.) Despite Rachel's enthusiasm, I didn't think I could stand by and watch the plan unfold. (I'm just going to go ahead and vote "no." It's too dangerous.)

Rachel gave me a look – it was both grateful and exasperated at the same time. "So Tobias goes Hork-bajir or something to grab the guy when he makes his move. Somebody else can watch from the air. I vote yeah. I vote _hell_ yeah."

"It's my plan – I guess you guys know what my vote is," Marco said simply with a shrug.

"No. No way," Cassie said. She still had that look of sick fear, the one she didn't get anymore when we were fighting the Yeerks. For whatever reason, Marco's plan had deeply disturbed her. Or maybe it was just the idea of a serial killer; yeah, I thought that would be enough in and of itself to make Cassie queasy. Cassie could handle violence, but she still wasn't very good with _senseless _violence. We all had our demons when it came to fighting the Yeerks, but this was something we hadn't come across yet.

Jake sighed. "God help me…but I think your idea is solid, Marco. As long as Rachel's willing to be the bait, I think we've got to go for it. Marco was right, last night – we can't know about this and do nothing. It's not right." He sighed, and I got the feeling he was trying to talk himself into it more than anyone else. "Besides, we don't have anything to do before Thursday, anyway."

"Nothing to do but a lot of praying and updating our wills," Marco said, but he was smiling easily. He felt better, now that we'd decided to do something about it. Even though I'd voted no, _I _felt better, too. What kind of people would we be if we let this go on?

"When?" Rachel asked.

Jake sighed again. "From everything we know, the guy doesn't much care what time of day it is. He's killed both early morning and late night. I say we do it now, while the parents are at work. We might not get another shot until tomorrow." He didn't say it, but now that a decision had been reached, there was no way we could let the guy do his thing for another twenty-four hours.

(Now?) Ax asked nervously. It was the first time he'd said anything, and I assumed he was just going to follow Jake, as usual. I realized now that the whole thing was freaking him out – I guess Andalites don't have serial killers. It's too illogical, and Andalites are an uber-logical race. It made him uncomfortable the way Z-space made us humans nervous.

Jake looked around and took everybody's emotional temperature. I guess he liked what he saw, because he nodded confidently. "Yeah, now. Let's get to work."

**A/N – **Thanks again for all the reviews, friends! Especially Sweetbriar, wredan, jurjid, and Theanimorpherz, most recently. Chlorinehamster – I've just got too much going on in this one to stretch everything out into a long mystery. It'll end up around 30k words, like all the others. Ax's fic is just on hold until I finish this one – scope out my profile for a full explanation. Thanks for the input!


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

I don't see the big deal with catching a killer. The 60 Minutes people talk about these guys like they're demented geniuses; I guess maybe the human ones are. But, from the time we got into position, it only took twenty minutes to know we were in the right place. A half an hour after that, we had the guy dead to rights.

Maybe I'm being unfair to the detectives and agents that dedicate their lives to finding these creeps. I mean, they have a lot of stuff going for them, but we still have a few advantages over them. Two pairs of raptor eyes – Marco and Cassie – saw absolutely everything going on within a mile or more of Rachel. They were the best surveillance gear a killer-catcher could ask for – mobile, hi-definition cameras that knew what they were looking for.

Not to mention, we had bait - a ready-made prototype fitting the serial killer's preference to the letter. I guess cops can't ask a normal teenage girl to risk her life to draw the guy out. Once the idea had been voiced, Rachel wouldn't be kept out of it. I guess I knew that from the start.

Maybe half a mile from the beach, very near to the sites of the first several murders, there was a walking track/nature trail. Really, it was just a scruffy, sorry path that looped through the woods for a couple of miles and ended up back where it started. Rachel was just kind of pacing between the place where the trail meets the road and the place where the path forks, starting the loop. The whole point was her to be visible to the maximum amount of people; not that there were many hikers wanting to use this particular trail, probably because it was in the known stalking grounds of a serial killer.

Still, there _were _people around. And, like I said, after about twenty minutes, we were sure about our location. Marco called it in.

(There's a guy following her,) he said in broad-band thought-speech, addressing all of us Animorphs at the same time. (He's definitely watching her, too.)

(What does he look like?) I asked, a little fascinated, despite myself. What would a serial killer look like?

(Like a dork,) Marco replied instantly. (Actually, Tobias, if you poke your head up in about thirty seconds, you'll probably be able to see him. Do it slowly and quietly – he's focused on Rachel, but that doesn't mean he won't notice a demon-goblin-jack-in-the-box-from-hell.)

I laughed. I was hunkered down behind a fallen, rotting redwood in Hork-bajir morph. I was well-hidden from the path; Hork-bajir lived in the trees on their own world, and their trees weren't so different from ours, I guess. The mottled, muddy, gray-green color of the Hork-bajir's skin seemed to blend into the bracken of our forest perfectly. Cassie had confirmed it, saying that even with raptor eyes, looking at me behind the tree was like looking at some sort of weird growth on the tree itself. Tree cancer, I think snipers call it when a camouflaged body looks like a part of a tree.

I counted to thirty and slowly peeked over the trunk. Sure enough, there was a guy in a tucked-in button-down shirt following Rachel from a distance. He was talking urgently on his cell, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. Suddenly, he flipped his phone closed and turned on his heel, heading back to the main road and leaving Rachel behind. (Ah, it was a false alarm,) I said. (He's leaving.)

(Maybe so, but I think that might have been the opening line to the play,) Marco said. (I thought we might see something like this first.)

(Like what?) Jake asked. He was in wolf morph, somewhere behind me. He'd wanted to go tiger, but in the end, Marco had convinced him that was a bad idea. If he was spotted, somehow, a wolf would be suspiciously out of place, but not _impossibly _out of place. We were already taking a risk with me in an alien morph – we didn't need to add an escapee from the zoo to it. Ax was with him, also in wolf morph.

(Spotters. If we're assuming that this is the work of one guy – or one Yeerk – I thought he might have other controllers working with him. Picking out good victims and calling in their locations, you know? It's got to be pretty hard to find a young blond girl by herself around town right about now – that's part of the reason I'm pretty sure this is going to work.) Marco sounded cocky, like everything was going according to plan, but I knew him well enough to detect the note of uncertainty in his voice. It was understandable – if _you _can deal with a serial killer, alien or otherwise, without getting creeped out…well, then you're tougher than we are. Tougher than me. The whole thing was one big outdoor haunted house, as far as the creep-factor went.

(Keep going, Rachel, you're doing great,) Cassie encouraged as Rachel once again turned around to make another lap. If I'd been human, I would have smiled grimly. Cassie had been totally opposed to the idea, but once she and I were outvoted, she'd accepted it with good grace. Cassie is awesome in all sorts of ways – putting aside her discomfort during a mission she never wanted in order to help us get the job done is just one of the amazing things she can do. (We think you've been spotted already. Don't worry, girl, we've got you covered like hot sauce on a burrito.)

All of us, except for Ax, laughed pretty hard at that. It was nervous laughter, though – dealing with murdering, body-stealing aliens was becoming old hat for us. This was something new and unsettling in a different way.

After waiting around for a little while longer, Cassie suddenly broke us out of the monotony. (Look alive, guys. The bad guy is here to play.)

(Yep,) Marco quickly confirmed. (I've got him, too. Tobias, get ready. Rachel, slow down just a little – that way, he'll catch up to you right about the time you pass by Tobias again.)

Two grey timberwolves slunk up next to me. I almost jumped, they approached so quietly…like gray dog-ghosts or something, they were. Jake called back the very question that was on my mind. (How do you know it's the right guy? We can't pop out on the wrong person.)

(Duh,) Marco predictably said. (Well, I'm assuming it's him. A normal hiker might have a knife like our friend down there – it's a big blade, in his back right pocket,) he added almost conversationally, letting us know where this guy would try to go when we hit him. (I'm guessing normal hikers don't think to bring a big ol' roll of duct tape and a pre-rolled gag, though.)

I could hear him coming, now. His footsteps were easy to pick out; heavy, eager crunches through the carpet of fallen leaves. (Hang in there, Rachel. He won't lay a finger on you – we've got him.)

She couldn't reply, of course, because she wasn't in morph. My mind did it for her, though, said to me what she would have said. '_Whatever. Just let this creep try to grab me. Let him try._' I smiled a scary, Hork-bajir smile even as I tensed my wiry muscles, ready to spring up and forward as soon as either Cassie or Marco said the word.

As the footsteps got closer, I started a mental countdown of the distance. '_Fifty feet. Forty. Twenty._' When I thought he was about twenty feet away, I _really _tensed my muscles, especially the big ones in my upper legs. '_Ten feet. Five. Four…_'

Marco's "voice" was impossibly loud amid my tension. (He's reaching for her! Now! Now, Tobias!)


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

The Hork-bajir morph was no cat, in terms of reflexes, but it was up to the job of snatching a human focused on another human. As I jumped the log in one bound and covered the fifteen feet between me and him, he barely had time to turn away from Rachel and toward me. His big, thick glasses caught the sun and flashed as his mouth fell open into a little _O_ of surprise.

The guy was short, skinny, and balding. His skin was waxy and pale, like he didn't go out into the sun if he could help it. If it hadn't been for one thing, I would have thought Cassie and Marco had made a mistake. But this skinny little man's right arm was still outstretched toward Rachel, and his left hand was already on the handle of the knife in his back pocket. The tips of his fingers were a bare six inches from Rachel's shoulder when I grabbed him. Instantly, the guy found himself in a half-nelson, but more effective than any human choke hold. Long, but strong, Hork-bajir arms encircled him, holding him tight, and then there was the extra incentive of the blades to keep him still. I felt a wolf nudge by my waist and tug at something, and the guy's knife fell to the wood chips that covered the trail.

We knew this guy was a Yeerk. A controller. We fully expected the Yeerk to be dead in three days, taking any and all of our secrets with him. We had decided not to push that, though. Jake had said it would be best if this Yeerk thought we were Andalites, just in case. Keeping him off-balance was the best choice. You know, on the off-chance this Yeerk somehow made it back to his comrades or whatever.

In the interest of keeping things confusing, I whispered in the Hork-bajir's snake-like voice directly into the guy's ear. I did this even as I was dragging him off of the path and back into the woods. "Don't move, human _Tektek._ Be good, or _splat_." I dug my elbow blade into his ribs a little to show I was serious. The guy nodded as well as he could with my forearm pulled tight against his neck.

I pulled him through the woods until we got several hundred yards away from the walking trail. We were still close enough for anyone on the trail to hear the guy if he yelled, but far enough away that we could move again before being found. '_Besides,_' I told myself, '_It'd take a brave soul to come charging into the deep woods after hearing a scream, especially with everything that's going on._'

Abruptly, I let the guy go and shoved him to his knees. I craned my head forward on my long neck until it was almost resting on his shoulder. "Hands behind back. No yell, no sound. Or die." I snapped my hard, beak-like lips down to emphasize my last word, and it made a satisfying noise like a rat trap closing. I was glad to see the guy shudder, and his hands clasped one another at the small of his back.

During the time I had been pulling the guy away from the trail, Marco had been changing forms. Now, he knuckle-walked out of the trees in his impressive gorilla morph. He took a look at the way I had the guy on the ground, like some devil cop about to arrest a suspect, and mimicked applause. The guy flinched as Marco reached into his other pocket for the man's own gag and tape, and I poked him not-so-gently in the kidney area with my knee blade. "No move, either. Human _versh _be still." I tried to sound like other Hork-bajir we'd fought, who somehow managed to sound both dumb and dangerous at the same time.

Marco quickly pulled strips of tape off of the roll and held them up for me to cut, which I did with efficient slashes with my wrist blade. He quickly secured the guy's hands behind his back, then he tied the gag into the man's mouth. (Let's see how _he _likes it,) Marco muttered as he roughly tied the gag off. He gave me a calm thumbs-up when he was finished, though, and back off into the trees to follow us at a distance.

(What'd I miss?) Rachel asked. Just as planned, when we had grabbed the guy, she'd just kept walking like nothing had happened. We assumed the guy would forget about her the second we grabbed him, but we were careful, just in case. He never saw anything but her back when she was human. Now she was a little ways off, keeping an eye on us like the others, but doing their best to stay invisible. I assumed she'd morphed to grizzly – it was her favorite, unless she could get away with morphing elephant and stomping some stuff. Not that a grizzly could be called stealthy, but it was a lot less noticeable than an elephant stomping through the woods.

I pulled the guy up by the tape on his wrists and shoved him roughly in the direction I wanted him to go. "Walk," I commanded, and he obeyed.

Marco answered Rachel's question. (Oh, you know, the usual. We've apprehended a half-human, half-alien serial killer, and we're on our way to a party shack in the woods in order to starve the alien out. No biggie.) Nobody laughed. Now that we had in our possession an actual serial killer, nobody felt much like laughing.

As we marched through the woods, nobody talked. I occasionally caught glimpses of blue, brown, black, and grey fur on either side of me – obviously, Ax had demorphed and was accompanying us in his Andalite form. That was okay – the Yeerk was going to think we were Andalites, anyway, and just like with Visser Three, having Ax as himself was only going to help our charade.

(One mile out,) Cassie informed us. (Tobias, turn south a couple of degrees, and you'll be heading straight for it. Right, I mean – your right. Sorry.) I felt proud of her as I made the course correction – it seemed like at least Cassie was finally coming around to thinking in terms of cardinal directions while she was in the air.

I was anxious to get this guy to the shack. I wanted out of the Hork-bajir morph – it was a friend's body, and I didn't like using it for longer than I had to. Ket Halpak had given me her permission, but it still made me feel weird.

For another thing, the guy was really giving me the willies. He hadn't said a single word since we'd grabbed him, even before he'd been gagged. I'd expected the Yeerk to threaten, to insult, maybe even to beg – but he'd done none of it. Not a solitary word. He just tromped through the woods as he'd been ordered. He didn't look around. He didn't ask questions. He just walked, and that freaked me out.

I mentally shrugged it off. '_Who are you to complain if, for once, a controller wants to cooperate?_' I asked myself, and the thought somehow made me feel worse instead of better.

**A/N – **I just realized where the word count on this one is. Turns out this fic might be closer to 35K – 40K words, instead of the usual 30K. Anyway, hope you're still enjoying, and thanks to those of you who continue to review!


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

We got to the shack without incident. Once inside, I put the man face down on the ground, more gently than he deserved. Marco and Ax got to work, tying some more rope over the tape already on his wrists. They then tied his legs together at the ankles. Using the last bit of rope, they strung the knots at his ankles to the knots on his hands, drawing his legs up to his back until he was trussed up as neatly as a rodeo calf.

When this was done, he rolled over onto his side and glared at the three of us inside of the shack – me, Marco, and Ax. He glared especially hard at Ax, who pretended not to notice. (Well, _that's_ finished,) he said with the attitude of someone finishing a particularly nasty bit of cleaning. (Shall we depart?)

The three of us turned to leave the shack, and for the first time, the controller started making noise. He was still gagged, but he was squirming and going, "Mmm! Mmm!" When I turned back, his eyes were wide and desperate. It made me feel better. Finally, this controller was acting like we expected him to.

I watched him wiggle violently in his bindings for a minute. (Marco, are you sure those knots are going to hold up to three days of this?) I asked.

He shrugged his big gorilla shoulders. (Ax tied them.)

(I believe they will hold,) Ax said. (I looked them up on the internet. They are called running slipknots, and the more he struggles, the tighter they should become. I quite like the art of human knot-making,) he added.

Not that I didn't trust Ax, but I didn't trust _any _knot to hold up to seventy-two hours of squirming by a desperate controller. I leaned down to speak to him again. "Human stop _grafash _struggle. We watch. You die if move."

When I said this, he started struggling even harder. His muffled yells became more urgent, and he rocked back and forth. I could see the way his hands were turning white – he was starting to cut off the circulation as he writhed. Ax saw it, too. (He knows we mean to leave him here. Perhaps he has decided that if he's going to die, he will take his host with him.)

(How do we stop him? Knock him out?) Marco wondered.

(We can't keep him unconscious for three days. We can't even stay out here with him.) I thought about it for a minute. (Maybe if we let him say his piece, he'll chill out.) Marco untied the gag, and the man coughed and wheezed for a second. Then he spoke for the first time.

His voice was polite, cultured, and over-the-top creepy. He soundedlike the sort of self-educated jerk who though he was smarter than everyone else. It made it easier to dislike him, as if we needed another reason. "I realize you Andalites' plan. You mean to leave me here and starve me to death. That is fine – I accept my fate. I will have you know, however, that this human will continue to kill other humans whether I am controlling him or not."

I was still in my role as a Hork-bajir. I also knew this Yeerk would say anything to survive. "Human shut up. _Hrrilit, _you -"

"No, _you _shut up, Andalite," he hissed. "Knock off that damned Hork-bajir idiot talk. We both know what you really are. I did not insult your intelligence by pretending to be the human I control. Do not insult mine."

(What _we _are is irrelevant, Yeerk,) Ax spat. (We would not hear your lies for longer than we must, so say whatever falsehoods you think will convince us to set you free and let us be on our way.)

The Yeerk made the man smile – in my opinion, it made the guy look exceedingly ugly. "I won't lie to you, and I won't try to convince you to spare my life." He paused for a moment. "I would prefer death to this prison."

(Explain yourself,) Jake said in his most emotionless, blandest thought-speech voice. He'd joined us in the shack. Rachel, too big to get through the door, stood just outside. Cassie faithfully kept watch over all of us from the sky.

"You Andalites understand that we Yeerks have a system of ranking controllers based on their usefulness, correct?"

I hadn't known that, but apparently Ax did. (I believe you rate your hosts on a scale of one to twelve, based on ease of control and several other factors. What of it?)

The man nodded. "Most humans are placed in the four to six range. Three is considered the minimum rank for an effective host. We do not come across many hosts who rank less than this, especially humans. Usually they are old, sick, or crippled, and we do not bother with them. But when we take one by accident, we do not waste them."

(Get to the point,) I said to the man in thought-speech for the first time.

"This human is a sub-one. We would not even use him for breeding purposes, in case his sickness infests other, potentially useful hosts."

Marco spoke up. He sounded a little too human for my tastes, but the Yeerk didn't appear to notice. (If this human isn't fit to be a host, then why do you infest him? What's your angle?)

"I have no angle." To my surprise, he looked deeply ashamed. It was almost funny. "The Yeerk who graded this host made several notes on it. Extreme homicidal tendencies, irrational thinking…and the fact that he _enjoyed _being host to an invading alien race. We could not trust him as a voluntary – he would likely snatch control away any time he recognized to opportunity to kill. He was interested to see if the Yeerk who would control him would kill more people than he would have, had he been himself."

(Again, Yeerk, if what you say is true…then why do you control him?) Ax demanded.

"It's a punishment!" he blurted out. "I fouled up an assignment. The Visser recognized this human as useful for distracting human law enforcement for a plan of his. I know not what this plan is, so you'll be wasting your time trying to get it out of me." He gulped air. "As punishment, I was ordered to this host and this mission. And I am going insane. The nest of poison that is this foul creature's mind is driving me crazy. _And none of my pool-mates will help me out of this. _That is why I ask – no, beg – you Andalites to do what my own people will not. If you truly are here to save human lives, you will kill both of us. Me and this horrible host. You will kill us both."


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

We were all stunned and speechless. Ax's natural hatred of the Yeerks covered for our silence quite nicely. (Oh, what colorful lies you tell, Yeerk. Your crying and puling might help you among emotional creatures like humans, but we Andalites know better. You're fooling no one.)

Looking as composed as he could while being helplessly tied up, the guy just looked away. "I hope, for your sakes, he is not the leader of your group," he said to the rest of us. "If you cannot rise above your prejudices based upon the situation, you will never win this war, let alone win this planet."

Ax's fingers curled into fists and I could tell he was about to go at the Yeerk again, but Jake stopped him. (Not now, Ax. That's not going to get us anywhere.) Then, to the Yeerk, he said, (My partners and I would like to go outside and discuss what you've told us. Can we trust you not to damage your host while we talk? At least until we figure out what we're going to do?)

I could see the realization in the controller's eyes as Jake spoke to him – _this _was the leader. He was almost respectful as he said, "Yes, Andalite. You can trust me that far. Perhaps even farther than that – when you return, I have a proposal which may help you believe my story."

Jake started to reply, but Marco beat him to it. (What proposal, Yeerk?) To the rest of us, he said, (Look, we don't have enough information to decide about this guy one way or the other. Maybe this will help us.)

The Yeerk hesitated for a minute, then spoke with great distaste. "I don't care what happens to me. I'll be executed for this failure if I return to the Pool. All that matters is that this human is not set free among his kind. I know you call the Visser an abomination, and no doubt you see it that way. I _swear _to you that this human is truly an abomination. He has no right to exist, no right whatsoever. I have never even _heard _of a mind so demented as the one I now inhabit."

(More of the same,) Ax said impatiently. (You _know _we will never willingly believe your stories, Yeerk. Why do you persist?)

He gave Ax a look of naked hatred. "Tell this little one to be quiet. He speaks of which he does not know. _Listen _to me. Once I've told you what you need to know, I will prove it."

(We don't silence one of our own,) I told him. (If he has something to say, he will say it. But, for the time being, continue your story.) I hoped I'd sounded as haughty as Ax does when speaking to Yeerks.

"Perhaps it sounds ridiculous for me to say I care about what happens to humans after I die. And, in a way, I don't. But this human…look, _no one _deserves to die as this human kills. There is no honor anywhere near it." Ax started to sneer – in thought-speech, of course – and the Yeerk cut him off. "I do not care if you believe that Yeerks have honor or not. Maybe we do, maybe we don't. Maybe our idea of it is so different from your own that they're not even the same quality. That is not the point."

"The point is this – no matter what your view on honor, we can all agree on the fact that taking a life for pleasure is dishonorable. Abominable. This man is an argument against a higher intelligence, at least a benevolent one – only an evil, malevolent god would create such a man. His only interest, his only goal in life, is taking other lives. He murders his own as a _hobby_. He is a loveless beast among a society that would try to find a place for him, anyway. He lives on a world far too good for him."

He took a breath and continued. "You will see all of this for yourself. Here is my proposal, Andalites. I will give up my host and put myself at your mercy. Kill me, leave me here, I don't care." He smiled and nodded his head to a missing wooden board in the wall and to the stream just past it. "Throw me in the stream – that would actually be my best chance at survival. I can never go back."

His smile faded. "To know that what I am telling you is the truth, one of you will need to acquire me. Once you do, infest this human and look at his rotten, evil mind. I look forward to hearing what you have to say after you have done that. I look forward to hearing you try to insult me once you see what I have been through." He actually made his host, the alleged psycho serial killer, chuckle. "Yes, I look forward to that _very_ much."

**A/N – **I'm assuming that no one is going to be mad at me if this one ends up being longer than the others I've written. I've pretty much got the plot sketched out, and I can't see myself finishing it in less than 40K words. Not while covering everything I want to play out. But here's the good news – if everyone follows the example set by jurjid, Sweetbriar, Theanimorpherz, wredan, iris129, and chlorinehamster and _**reviews**_, I'll finish this one up quickly. If the reviews are good, I can actually see finishing this one by tonight or tomorrow. That's up to you guys, though. Three people reviewing a chapter out of forty-eight signed in readers isn't going to cut it. Anyway, hope you're enjoying, take it easy!


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

It wasn't necessary for us to leave the shack to have our discussion. We could have just used private thought-speech. But if everybody else felt the same as me, it _was _necessary. I felt like I had to get out of that place. I didn't know if the Yeerk was telling the truth or not, but the fact was that at least _one _of the creatures in that shed was a serial murderer. And I felt dirty just breathing the same air. Once outside, I demorphed.

Nobody said anything at first, and I guess Jake figured we were waiting on him to start. (I don't know what you guys want to hear from me. I'm lost on this one. I have no idea what to do.)

(Is it a bluff or not?) Marco asked. (He thinks we're Andalites, and he knows no Andalite would ever want to morph a Yeerk. Maybe he thinks we'll believe him without calling his bluff, you know? Just because he put the offer out there or whatever…I guess it all depends on whether or not he thinks we'd actually take him up on it.)

(Marco is correct,) Ax said. (No sane Andalite would consider becoming our enemy, even in order to find out something useful. This falls under the category of us not interfering in other species' affairs. I will excuse myself from this matter, now. This is between you humans.)

(But it's not,) Cassie argued gently. (It's not just between humans. There's a Yeerk involved, and that changes everything.)

(So it's down to what Marco said,) Rachel mused. (We have two choices – we can either believe his story, take him at face value. Or we can call his bluff – if he's actually bluffing – and check out his story for ourselves.)

(Would it help?) I asked. I was thinking ahead to what we would do if the Yeerk _was_ being honest. (What if he's on the level? We would have a Yeerk in his natural state to deal with, not to mention a sick killer. What do we do with him? What do we do with either of them?)

(I don't know,) Jake said. (The Yeerk…if he's being real about the killer, then he's probably being real about not being able to go back to his own people. If that's the case, I say we do what he suggested and toss him into the stream. Live, die…whatever. We'd probably just be extending his life for a couple of days, but that's more than Visser Three would do for him.)

(What about the man?) Cassie asked, sounding troubled.

Jake let his control slip a little, and it manifested itself as a little, uncomfortable growl from his wolf morph. (I don't know. We don't have any options, there. We can't turn him in to the cops, not without risking what we are. We can't let him go, either. I won't be responsible for turning him loose and having him go on a murder spree. But I won't kill him, either – we're not like him, and we can't start killing our own. No matter what.)

(Our own,) Marco repeated, sounding amused and disturbed. (I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't consider someone who enjoys killing little girls one of my own. And I don't care what you think about me, but I'd rather kill him myself than cut him loose to do his thing.)

(Vote?) Rachel asked. She tried to sound confident, but she was troubled.

(No,) Jake said instantly. (I won't allow that.) I was a little shocked – Jake had never outright seized the reins like that. He'd never just taken total control of a situation. I guess he felt like he had to, in order to spare us the horror of having to vote on something like that. On having to vote on murder.

Maybe he was doing it to keep the peace. Maybe he didn't want to know which way each of us would vote, and he didn't want us to be divided over such a big issue.

Either way, we were saved from having to make that terrible decision. Erek showed up with a solution, right on time. How he knew where we were, I have no idea. The Chee are spooky when it comes to knowing things they shouldn't.

"I assume that's the killer everybody's looking for that you have in there," came his voice from behind a hundred-year-old oak tree. He stepped out where we could see him. "It is, isn't it?"

(Yeah, Erek,) Jake said wearily. (We drew him out with Rachel and kidnapped him. But the Yeerk is saying he's not the real killer – that it's the host.) He went on to explain the whole thing, Erek just nodding along peacefully.

Erek sat on a log heavily. He was just doing it because it was the human thing to do, I guess. Erek the Android didn't need to sit or rest, ever. He looked at each of us. "I can handle it. If the Yeerk is telling the truth, I can handle both of them." His facial hologram showed a weary expression. "But in order for me to take that step, I have to be sure he's telling the truth. That means that one of you will have to take him up on his offer. One of you will need to morph a Yeerk and enter that human. It's imperative. Until we know for sure, we can't do anything."

(Morph a Yeerk,) Marco mused. He sounded disgusted, but then he cheered up. I guess it's just Marco's way of making things easier; usually, when we were faced with a bad situation, he was almost jolly. He sounded like he was, anyway. (So, we gonna draw straws, or does somebody want this great honor all for themselves?) he asked brightly.


	23. Chapter 23

**A/N – **I guess it's a little early to complain, since I just put the last two chapters up a few hours ago…but they each already have over 10 separate readers with no reviews. Even though these author's notes are apparently ineffective and pointless, I still want to ask you to take the time to review. Is it some sick sadist thing, where the more I ask, the more pleasure you get out of ignoring me? I'm honestly curious. Whatever…to those of you who are decent, enjoy the new content! It's for you!

Chapter 23

Nobody answered Marco at first. Cassie muttered, (This is borderline. This is _so _borderline…how can we do the same thing we're fighting the Yeerks for doing?)

(When all of your choices are bad, you make the best one,) Marco said, as if it should have been obvious. (This is by far the best one. Unless you want to either let him go back to his life of killing kids or kill him yourself.)

(Shut up, Marco. You've made your point – now you're just being a jerk,) Rachel growled at him. Then, to Jake, (The jerk is right, though. We draw straws.)

Jake took a long look at Ax. (Anybody who wants to be kept out of this one, I'll understand.) Even though he was looking at Ax, I assumed the statement was more for Cassie. After all, Ax had already made it clear that he wasn't into morphing a Yeerk.

Ax looked like he'd just walked in on somebody putting fertilizer on his feeding grass, but he said, (I will do my duty. If the five of you can consider doing this, then I can – I _must _– be a part of it, too. That is the way a team works.)

The only other person who would have a complete objection to doing what one of us was going to have to do would be Cassie, and she seemed to know it. (That's true. We all need to pull together here – I'm in. God help me, I'm in.)

Marco picked six long pieces of grass, then snapped one in half. He hid the bottoms in his massive fist and offered one to Rachel. She pulled a long one. I was next. I got a sinking feeling when I plucked one out with my beak and realized it was the short one. (That's that,) I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. (Guess I'm about to learn the meaning of the term "know your enemy.")

(Great Rage Against the Machine song,) Marco joked. Four dirty looks went his way, and he shut up and looked at his feet, letting the remaining grass in his hand fall to the ground. (Sorry, Tobias.)

(No biggie,) I said, trying to sound like it was no big deal, one way or the other. (Ax, tell him we accept his proposal. I guess we'll know if he was lying by how he reacts to that.) The sudden, stupid hope that the Yeerk would say, "Aw, you got me. Nevermind," was starting to work its way into my consciousness.

(Tobias, you don't have to do this,) Rachel told me privately as we headed back inside of the shack. (I'll volunteer. Really, I don't care.) But the truth was that Rachel didn't want to morph a Yeerk any more than I did. She was just being considerate. I appreciated it, and said so.

(Thanks, Rachel, but it's my job. We can't start undermining the sacred ritual of Drawing Straws,) I tried to kid with her, but she just stared at me blankly with the appraising eyes of a grizzly.

Once inside, Ax spoke to the man. (We accept, Yeerk. Leave this human, and we will find out if you speak the truth.)

The man looked surprised, like he hadn't expected that, but nodded. "Just out of curiosity, what will you do with me once I am out of this human?"

(I thought you said you didn't care if you lived or died,) Rachel challenged, and Jake told her privately to let Ax handle the controller. The Yeerk answered her anyway.

"Of course I care," the Yeerk said. "I only said that I would prefer death to this…assignment. I'm still afraid. I'm not insane, like the man I inhabit. He is laughing at me mercilessly right now. He wants to watch you kill me."

(We won't kill you, Yeerk,) Ax said. (You may not survive the day, but we will not end your worthless life.)

The guy nodded again. "I guess that's the best I can ask for." He looked at each of us grimly. "I don't know which of you has taken the assignment of doing this…but you have my sympathy. I hope that seeing this man's mind doesn't ruin you, the way it's ruined me." And without another word, the man went rigid and I saw the Yeerk wriggling out of his right ear. I looked away.

I knew when it was done, because the man bound on the floor began yelling immediately. "Don't listen to it!" he screamed. "He would say anything it took to survive, please don't do it, don't take control of me again!" He began to cry, and despite what I believed him to be, I felt sorry for him. "Please, please don't! It's a trick, he just wants -"

Jake snarled, and took the man's neck in his jaws. (You shut up, now. Not another word. If you're being honest, this will be over before you know it. If you're what the Yeerk says you are…) he trailed off menacingly. The man just whimpered.

I flapped over to where the Yeerk sat on the floor. It's really hard not to feel a little bit sorry for them when you see them in their natural state. The only thing that makes you indifferent is the fact you know they'd enslave everyone you know, given their way. It's easier to imagine them in a host body, perpetrating their evil plans. Seeing them on a dirt floor, quivering and blind and deaf…it's harder not to feel sorry for them on some level.

I reached out a talon and tried not to shudder as I made contact. I focused until the Yeerk became a part of me. After it was done, Marco picked it up and held it outside of the doorway, where I assume Erek took it away from him. I almost began the morph until something occurred to me. (Ax, do I have to worry about the Yeerk's instincts taking over? I mean, I'll be able to control him, not the other way around, right?)

Thankfully, Ax believed that was the case. (As a rule, the more intelligent a species is, the less they rely on their instincts. This is true for humans, is it not? It is true for Andalites, as well; I would assume a Yeerk is much the same. In _that _regard, at least.)

(Yeah. Okay. And I'll be able to communicate through thought-speech, anyway. Not like I'll be totally cut off from you guys.) I realized I sounded nervous, like I was trying to talk myself into it, and stopped talking. I closed my eyes, and began to morph into the last creature in the universe I ever wanted to become.


	24. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

I noticed my friends were all demorphing as I started my own morph. They were getting close to the time limit, and now that the Yeerk was in Erek's capable hands, they must have felt the danger was past.

As I shrank, I felt my feathers blend together. I felt my bones go soft. I fell to the ground, limp, probably looking like a nightmarish, short-necked version of a rubber chicken.

My senses seemed to shut off, one by one. My eyesight went dim before it disappeared altogether. My sense of smell, which is keen but usually unnecessary because of my awesome eyesight, went next. Something like smell replaced it, but it's impossible to describe how that worked. My hearing didn't so much disappear as change – I automatically started translating the vibrations against my moistening skin much the way an animal with ears does with an eardrum. The last thing I clearly heard as an Earth animal was Rachel and Marco going back and forth.

"Don't do it, Marco. I can see that look on your face. If you make one single joke, I swear to God I'll punch you straight in the nose. Try me."

"Jeez, I wasn't _gonna_," Marco protested, using the indignant voice he used when somebody called him out on something he definitely was about to do.

I would have laughed, but there was nothing funny about the helpless feeling that was settling over me as I finished the changes. There were a few muted instincts – one of them was wanting to get somewhere wet – but other than that, nothing. Being a Yeerk was like being knocked out, or in a deep sleep. I saw images in my mind, but they were all made of memories – my memories. The Yeerk I'd morphed was just a body created from DNA, and it had no memories of its own.

I felt pressure, then movement. (It is only I, Tobias,) Ax said. (I am transferring you to our captive. Do you…will your current body know what to do?)

I could hear that he was trying with all of his control not to sound disgusted by what I was. By my "current body." (I don't know – I guess so. I'm not getting much in the way of instincts, here.)

Just when I said that, I started to feel something. Vibrations, maybe. No, that wasn't quite right…popping? Crackling? That was it – it felt like the crackling of static electricity against your skin right before a really bad thunderstorm. An extension I hadn't known was a part of me extended away from my body, toward the buzzing, popping sensation. I realized with a shock that I was sensing the actual electricity from our prisoner's brain activity. I had always wondered how the Yeerks found their way into their hosts – now I guess I knew.

Almost unconsciously, I started contracting and squirming, heading toward the electricity. Things got in my way, but little tiny extrusions from my body pushed and tugged and secreted something. Before I knew it, I was a part of the electricity.

As I merged with the buzzing thing beneath me, previously unused parts of my Yeerk brain began to…I don't know, fill up. It's like when you turn on an old fluorescent light bulb, and parts of it light up in sequence. Parts of the Yeerk's consciousness, previously unused, were lighting up.

Sight! Pow! Even though I'd only been without it for maybe two minutes, its return was glorious.

Smell – real smell! I could taste the very air! Slowly, even though the sudden return of senses threatened to disarm me, I remembered what I was doing. And, tentatively, I tried to open communication with the brain I currently controlled.

I was shocked at what I found. The mind I touched was cold, so very cold. It watched me with no emotion whatsoever. Well, _almost_ no emotion – I felt disappointment, but also an apathy behind it. Instinctively, I followed the course of that emotion to get to the root of it, and what I saw made me sick – metaphorically, of course.

The jig was up, and this guy knew it. He knew that I knew what he was, and that he wouldn't be allowed to continue what he thought of as "playtime." Don't let that childish word fool you – that's just what he called it.

The man – Arnold Underwood, I noted his name with little interest – was an animal. Actually, he wasn't – I just couldn't think of another word for what he was at the time. What had the Yeerk called him? '_A beast – a loveless beast._' Yeah, that description was extremely accurate.

He was a lawyer – a defense attorney, ironically. He was smart and good at his job. He made a lot of money and had a lot of powerful friends, which was what drew the Yeerks to him in the first place. All of that – his career and social life, what would be the central point of any normal person's life - was so dim in comparison to what this man called playtime. He lived for his playtime, which was simply murder.

He spent every single bit of his free time planning and carrying out his horrible crimes. He was smart, like I said, which was how he hadn't been caught yet. And he had never been so bold as to stab girls and leave them where they would be found – he took care of his victims in other ways.

I flipped through his memories the way a person watches a car accident – horrified, but also unable to stop myself from looking. I watched as he put a drop of pure nicotine into the coffee of his coworker's secretary. I hadn't known that concentrated nicotine was fatal, but Arnold Underwood knew it, so I knew it. I watched as he watched through a vent as she fell out of her desk and seized uncontrollably. I heard him saying little, blasphemous prayers to himself that no one would discover her until it was too late.

I watched as he pushed a little boy in front of a city bus.

I saw him lean over the partition of a bathroom stall, where a man was doing his business, and watched him hit the poor, unsuspecting guy in the head with a hammer.

I saw him strangle a cab driver on a dark, deserted street, and then step out of the cab and walk calmly away like nothing had happened.

I finally slammed the book of his memory shut when I saw him drop a few pellets of rat poison into a baby bottle in the refrigerator of an acquaintance's house. Young, old, male, female, black, white – when it came to "playtime," Arnold Underwood did not discriminate.

'_What is _wrong _with you!_' I screamed at the man, unable to stop myself. '_What in God's name is your malfunction!_'

His only reply, the only thing he said to me the entire time I controlled him, was this: '_God's name? There _is_ no God._'

I almost believed him. I detached from his brain, yelling wordlessly in pure outrage and horror. Yelling to no one in particular and everyone at once. How, how, _how?_ If there was a God, how could this…_thing_…exist?

I needed to get out, and I needed out _now._

I barely even realized it when my eyesight returned. I didn't even care. I just wanted wings – at that moment, I would have given absolutely anything for my wings. Absolutely anything to get away from the monster whom I had just been inside.

Like any other sane human, I had just experienced something beyond horrible, and I just wanted _out of there._


	25. Chapter 25

Chapter 25

I'm not proud of it, but I took off. Away from the shack, away from my friends, away from the Yeerk, away from Erek…but most of all, away from Arnold Underwood.

I thought that there could be nothing worse than the Yeerks. Now I knew better. At least they had a reason for the things they did. A goal. I'd thought they were cruel, and maybe they are. But compared to the evil person I'd just been inside of, they were saints.

I could hear my friends talking to me, calling me back, but I ignored them. To be honest, I barely even heard them. I noticed their shouts the same way I notice the crickets in my meadow at night – background noise. And as I flew away, they let me go.

I knew they'd know the deal by my reaction. I felt no need to explain what I'd found, exactly. I didn't want to subject them to it, and I didn't want to go over it. Not now, not ever. I would spend the rest of my life trying to forget the rattlesnake pit that was the mind of Arnold Underwood.

It was disgusting. Sickening. Marco had said the guy wasn't one of our own, but in the galactic scheme of things, he was. The thought that even someone like a Yeerk would judge other humans by that mind was physically repulsive.

I never thought I'd think these words: the Yeerk was right. That…man…had no right to exist. No right whatsoever.

I was almost back to my meadow when Cassie caught me on the wing. (Tobias? We -)

I cut her off. I was rude, even. (I won't go back there. I don't care. You're wasting your time.)

Before, than had been an unforgivable thing for me – to be rude to Cassie. I live by a modified version of the golden rule. Do unto others as others do unto you. It's simple, really. If someone is nice to you, be nice back. If someone is a jerk, give it right back. I knew that if I'd lived by that while I was still human, I would have avoided a lot of problems.

Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but it doesn't hurt to put your principles in action. Right now, I didn't care about principles. Not even my own. (He killed kids, Cassie. Before he was a controller. He killed a _baby_.) I don't know if I was explaining why I had been rude, or if I was just trying to get the memories out of me. That's not the way it works, though. You can't unsee what you've seen. You can't unknow what you know.

(We know,) she said sadly as I hit my hunting perch, the one at the top of the lightning-struck pine. She perched two trees over. (_I _know. As soon as he got control back, I guess he knew the game was over. He started bragging. I was hoping he was lying. I guess he wasn't.)

(What kind of a monster does that?) I asked bleakly. Then, I was struck with another horrifying thought – _It's not over._ I almost panicked. (The others are watching him, right? He can't get away. He _can't._)

(It's over, Tobias. Erek handled it. The killer _and _the Yeerk.)

(How?) I didn't want to know, but I had to. I had to be sure that man would never, ever be allowed to walk free again. If I had to kill him, I would. And I wouldn't even feel as bad about it as I do about killing my prey.

I don't worry myself about the morality of my kills. That man deserved to be slaughtered like an animal. That, and worse.

(The Chee planted DNA evidence linking him to the crimes. Fitting, isn't it? He's been framed for crimes he actually did commit. The FBI has choppers on the way to the shack right now. Apparently, Lourdes – one of the Chee, remember? – used to be an agent during the Roosevelt Administration. She still has connections.)

(And the Yeerk?) I asked.

(Erek's got him. They have a modified Yeerk pool at the King house, in the underground park. They keep the Yeerks who are supposed to be infesting the Chee there. He'll live a normal, healthy life. The Chee are even working on a way to communicate with them in their natural states.)

(And what happens when the killer starts talking about Yeerks and Andalites?) I asked. I couldn't bring myself to think of him by his name. He didn't deserve a name.

Cassie spoke softly. (We thought of that. We figure either one of two things will happen. Either he'll start spouting off about that stuff to real, human authorities, in which case he's not going to help his case for being sane much. Or scenario number two, he talks about those things in the presence of controllers.)

She left it at that. She didn't need to say more. We all knew what happened to people who knew too much about the Yeerks and were dumb enough to talk about it.

I finally, finally felt something akin to relief as I realized that Cassie was right – it was over. With that feeling came the embarrassment of taking off like I had. (Cassie, I'm sorry. Sorry for running away like that.)

(Don't do that, Tobias.) Her voice was so gentle. The complete opposite of the man I'd just left bound on the shack floor. (I can't even imagine how horrible that was.) She was quiet for a minute, then she said, (_I'm _sorry. I'm sorry for standing by and letting you go through that.)

That little bit of kindness would have been enough to set me to weeping, had I been human. It might not have ever stopped, once it started. That's the way I felt – like I just wanted to cry forever.

Not for the first time, I thanked whoever was out there for the fact that hawks don't cry.

Cassie seemed to remember something important. (Sorry to do this, Tobias, but we have to go. Now. Both of us.) Without waiting for me, she left the wilting elm and spiraled upward for altitude.

(But you said it was over,) I said blankly, not comprehending.

(That part of it is,) she said. (But we have other problems. The Yeerks know we took down their distraction, and they don't have time to set up another. So, while the cops are still busy with this one, they're going ahead with their plan. They're taking their diamonds, and soon.)

(When?) I asked as I spread my wings to join her.

(We're not 100% sure, but Erek thinks it'll probably be within the next few hours. They have to strike before the FBI gets out word that they have the guy and the cops stop looking.) She stopped talking as a wicked cross-breeze threatened to send her sideways. She righted herself. (So that means we have to be ready _now._ Everybody's waiting for us.)

(We don't even have a plan!) I said.

(Yeah,) she agreed. (There's that problem, too.)


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter 26

As Cassie and I approached the barn, I could see that the fun had already started.

As with any high-stress situation, my friends were already at each other. It's funny, I guess. When stuff gets bad and tense, everybody thinks that they know best. Marco gets pushy, Rachel gets pushy. Jake's learned to just kind of wait for them to get tired of arguing and to look to him to be the mediator – when that happens and he takes control, that's when we get things decided.

As I buzzed the barn's loft opening to shoot to the best perch in the house, I came into hearing range. It was Marco who was talking, as usual.

"I don't know what the Chee have planned, and it really doesn't matter. They're not letting us in on it, anyway. I know Erek said we need a presence at each spot, but splitting up like that is suicide. Especially when we're not even going to stand a chance of winning!"

"Erek helped us out with the serial killer thing. You don't think he's going to hang us out to dry on this, do you?" Rachel demanded. "I mean, this is his planet, too. He's going to do whatever it takes to save it."

"Yeah – save _it_. Earth. Not us. Now, if we were dog groomers or the dog whisperer, maybe he'd care. Maybe he'd save us then. But who are we to him? Just a row of pawns to fight their fight for them."

(It's not their fight,) I said quietly. I was slowly getting my head into the game – I had to. (The Chee are not at risk of losing their species, or what's left of it. We are. They're only trying to help us – I can't believe you'd even question that after what we've done together.)

Marco is shameless when he's trying to make his point, so I guess what he said shouldn't have surprised me. But it did. He looked up at me shrewdly. "I thought you were going to be more anti-human than ever, based on the way you hauled butt out of there earlier. I mean, that guy made you run away like a scared chicken. You sure -"

Whatever he had been about to say was lost as Rachel balled her fist and swung on him. She busted him in the eye, and he fell down to one knee, holding his hands to it. He was looking up at her in shock – none of us had actually ever hit another member.

"That's enough!" Jake practically roared. "We do _not _have time for this crap!" He lowered his voice and started to pace. "Any minute now, Erek is going to walk through those barn doors and tell us that the Yeerks are making their move. When that happens, we are going to have to go, plan or no plan. Personally, I prefer a plan." He looked to where his best friend was still on his knees in the hay, clutching his eye. "First, apologize to Tobias. That was _way _out of line, I don't care how stressed out you are." Jake's tone didn't leave any room to argue with him.

Marco's mouth worked up and down a couple of times before anything came out. He stood up, glared at Rachel, and then looked up at me. "Sorry," he said, and he actually did sound a little regretful. He seemed like he was about to say more, but then he shut up and looked at the ground.

(Not a big deal,) I said, trying to sound as mild as I could. The sting of the comment was already fading. With Marco, either you learned to let him roll off of you like water, or you were going to get your feelings hurt an awful lot.

Jake nodded, then turned to Rachel. "Apologize to Marco. We don't punch each other. We've got enough on our plate fighting the Yeerks."

She stared at him in open shock. "Apologize? After what he said? He's lucky I didn't -"

"Apologize," Jake demanded again flatly. "We have to move forward, and we have to do it right now."

(Just do it, Rachel. He's right. Marco's a jerk, but he didn't deserve a haymaker in the eye. Hell of a right hook, by the way.) The beginnings of a smile twitched the corner of her mouth as I joked with her in private thought-speech. (Just do it so we can get to work. I'm fine, I promise.)

Marco stood up and took his hand away from his eye, shoving it in his pocket. It was already starting to swell. He looked a little disgruntled, but he said, "Don't worry about it. She's not sorry, and I guess I don't blame her. What are we going to do about this diamond robbery? We have to focus on that."

I admired that out of Marco. He saw the situation for what it was, and even though his eye was probably throbbing and blurry, he'd realized that he deserved it and wanted to get down to business, despite it. I guess Cassie thought so, too, because she smiled broadly and threw her arm around him.

"You're a good man," she told him. "And at least now we know you don't need to be in gorilla morph to tough out a punch." Despite himself, he grinned back at her. Rachel looked rueful for the first time as she realized she'd overreacted, and she actually did apologize. Marco smiled at her, she smiled back, and all was forgiven.

"Five locations. Six warriors. War-rhea-ers." Ax was in human morph, because we didn't know exactly when Cassie's parents would be getting home. "We will be able to have two people –pee-pee-pee-pull – at one site. Which site? Which pee-pool?" I noticed he had something brown smeared on his front teeth, and decided that I didn't want to know.

"That's the only part I've got figured out," Jake said. "Erek requested that Marco be at the diamond exchange. He didn't say why, and I didn't ask. But it seemed important to him. Since that's going to be the worst fighting, I thought I'd send the backup with him." He looked at Marco. "I'm not exactly excited about more or less ordering you to the most dangerous place -"

"Yeah, yeah," Marco said. "It's cool. If that's where Erek needs me, then that's where I'll be." He grinned. "It's probably because I'm the smartest. The most able to deal with a bad situation. The best -"

We all cut him off with a chorus of groans, and he laughed. You have to stop Marco when he gets on a roll about himself like that, or he'll go on for hours. Jake was still smiling as he said, "Yeah, I'm sure that's why. But I was going to let you pick your own backup, since you're taking the most dangerous mission of the six of us."

I thought he'd take Ax for his tail, or even Rachel for her battle morphs, despite the fact she'd almost knocked him out five minutes ago. Maybe _because _of the fact she had almost knocked him out five minutes ago. So he surprised me really good when, without hesitation, he said, "All right, then. I'll take Tobias."

(What?) I blurted. Everybody, including Ax, was looking at him funny. Nobody had expected that.

He shrugged. "The whole point of backup is to have someone watch your back. Nobody does that as well as Tobias, not even close." He tipped a wink up at me. "You know, that is, if you'll go with me after the jerk comment I made earlier."

(Yeah, sure,) I said, still a little stunned. I tried to shake it off. (I got you covered.)

"Good," Jake said. "That's settled. The rest of us are on our own, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Erek says we just have to make ourselves seen, maybe leave a scratch or two on a couple of controllers, and get out of Dodge." He passed out the assignments. "I'm at Allendale. Rachel, you're at Meridian Mutual. Ax is going to hit Seabreeze Financial, and Cassie will take care of Armitage."

Jake didn't finish a moment too soon. As he finished saying the word "Armitage," Erek skidded to a stop just inside the barn doors. He had been really moving – there were eight-inch-deep furrows left in the hard red clay where he screeched to a halt. "Look alive!" he called to us. "The Yeerks are moving out, and they're in a hurry!"

Jake took a second to give us all an encouraging look before he started to grow feathers. "You heard the man. We all know what we're doing. Let's get to it."


	27. Chapter 27

Chapter 27

It only took Marco and I about fifteen minutes until we were directly above the DeBolt Diamond Exchange. (The guards don't know they're about to be robbed,) I said, stating the obvious. I guess Marco was still feeling a little guilty over sniping at me about the serial killer thing, because he didn't say anything sarcastic. (I think the guy in the second guard station is sleeping, actually.)

The way it was set up, there was only one way in or out of the compound. A narrow access road zig-zagged from the main road to the building, with a gate and guard station for each fence you had to go through. There were three of them.

At each gate, there was a team of four guys. Each guy carried an assault rifle, a big pistol, grenades, the works. They looked like soldiers from an army outfit, not civilian guards.

(Still,) Marco said. (I don't know how the Yeerks are planning to get through that. They obviously don't have their people on the inside, or else they could just take the diamonds in the middle of the night.)

A glint of metal caught my eye from in between two dumpsters parked at the back of the building. I focused on it, and saw one ivory-and-steel hand waving up at us. Just a hand – Erek's hologram was cloaking the rest of him. (Let's go. Erek's signaling us.) I folded my wings back and dropped toward the dumpsters.

When we landed, the world around us went shimmery, and suddenly I could see Erek. I knew he'd extended his hologram to cover the three of us. Marco started to demorph – slowly, at first, then faster once Erek didn't tell him not to. (So, what's the deal?) I asked.

Erek sounded nervous, if it's possible for an android to sound that way. "The Yeerks will be here any minute. We'll know all about it – they weren't able to get but a few of their people inside of this operation. They're going to bust their way in. Full frontal assault."

"What?" Marco asked, almost totally human. "What happened to keeping a low profile?"

Erek shrugged. "They'll use human controllers and human weapons. It's not beyond belief that a human group would attack this place. There are literally billions of dollars in diamonds inside of this building." He knocked lightly on the stone wall behind him.

"If that's the case, they're going to bring more guys with guns than they have protecting this place, and they're going to be packing some serious heat. What are me and Tobias supposed to do about it? How can we stop them?"

Erek shook his head. "I already told you, we're not stopping them. We're tricking them." He pointed to a case at his feet. "I need you to replace the real diamonds they're after with the ones in this case. I can get you into the building, but you have to make the actual switch."

"What are those? Cheaper diamonds?" Marco asked of the case.

"Chee synthetics. Virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. Even the chemical composition will look the same to the spectrometers the Yeerks will use to test them."

(You're telling me you can't do that yourself?) I asked. (Why not? I mean, fake diamonds can't hurt anybody.)

"We'll need your gorilla morph," Erek said to Marco. He started morphing. To me, he said, "Actually, they will. If the Yeerks try to use them in weaponry – which we all know they will – they will undoubtedly create the scenario known as a _flaargaar_ and kill the user, along with anyone within a ten-foot radius. I cannot switch them, knowing what I know. But you can."

(So how can you get us in the building, then?) I asked, curious. (Can you even destroy property? I mean, will your programming allow that?)

Erek laughed a little. "I changed my programming back to exclude all possibilities of violence, it's true. But I was deliberately vague when it came to reprogramming my demolition procedures. As long as it doesn't cause direct harm to a living being, I can tear down all the buildings I want."

(Well, that's _something_, at least,) Marco said. He picked up the case by the handle in-between his thumb and first two fingers – his hand was too fat to carry it like a regular person. (You ready to do this?) he asked Erek.

"We have to wait until the attack starts. When everything is confused, that's when we have to make the switch. The Yeerks can't get any hint of foul play, or it might ruin the whole plan."

He looked me dead in the eye. His voice was serious. "You can't just leave once the switch is made. You have to attack them after they take the case, even though we want them to have it. They have to believe that you "Andalites" are trying your best to keep the case away from them." He looked down at the ground. "I hate asking this of you, my friends. I hate it. But you understand why I must," he shrugged helplessly. "If this plan fails, the human race ceases to exist. That is unacceptable."

(_Very _unacceptable,) Marco agreed. (Tobias, I think you're going to want to morph something a little tougher. Sounds like we're in for a pretty good fight.)

He was right. The most dangerous morph I had at my disposal was my Hork-bajir morph. That was okay, though – the Yeerks would know it was an "Andalite" in morph. They weren't bringing any of their own Hork-bajir along on this one. I started growing and changing.

At first I thought I was hearing my bones popping as they thickened and changed directions. I quickly realized it was gunfire on the other side of the compound. "Okay," Erek said, sounding sad. "Here we go."

(Let's get it done,) I said as Erek turned to the building and started to make a hole. (Let's do it.)


	28. Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Erek smashed concrete blocks and bent reinforcing steel girders with an eerie speed. The wall was no less than a foot thick, designed to stand up to hand-held artillery. Erek was _way _more powerful than a rocket-propelled grenade, and he was proving it.

When the hole was big enough, I nimbly leapt through it into the building. Marco was right behind me. "Down the hall, pass two doorways on your right. Take the one on the left, and you'll be at the vault. I've locked the retina scanner open, you just need to punch in the code. 526900091621, enter," Erek called after us softly.

(Oh, is that all?) Marco asked sarcastically as he followed me down the hallway. (Just a billion numbers to remember, no big -)

(Marco, shut up,) I demanded. I was repeating the series of numbers to myself as I ran down the empty hallway, trying to remember them. Planet Earth depended on my ability to remember those twelve numbers.

To his credit, he _did _shut up. But another distraction was on the way – from the front of the building, I could hear gunshots and at least one bigger explosion. (They're in,) Marco said tensely as we hung the left we were supposed to. (Man, that was _fast._ They went through the exterior guards like butter.)

There in front of us was the biggest vault door I'd ever seen. Okay, so I haven't seen a bunch of vault doors in my life…but this thing was intimidating. I ran to the control panel and carefully lined up the claw-like nail at the end of the Hork-bajir's finger. (Five-two-six. Nine thousand. Nine-one-two-six-one.) I prayed and pressed enter.

"Incorrect entry code," a mild female voice said from hidden speakers. "You may re-try."

I said a word I won't repeat and tried again. I was sure I had the first seven numbers right. I was also convinced I'd managed to jumble the last five. I hoped I'd have enough time to switch them around and get it right before the Yeerks got there. As I was about to try again, Marco said, (Tobias, you gotta hurry. They're getting closer, and they're moving fast.)

I could hear that he was right – the gunshots were growing louder, bouncing their echoes down the cavernous hallways of the diamond exchange. (If you don't leave me alone, I'll never get it open,) I grated, and started typing numbers again. Enter.

"Incorrect entry code. You have one remaining attempt. If another incorrect code is entered, the vault will lock down for one hour and security will be summoned. Would you like to re-try?"

We could not be locked out of this vault. Couldn't have it. The whole mission, the whole _world_, depended on it. (Marco, run back and ask Erek for the last five numbers one more time!)

(No time,) he said anxiously, and I realized he was right. The shouts and gunshots were literally down a hall and around a corner – in seconds, they'd be on top of us. (Give it your best shot.)

I don't hesitate very often anymore, but I hesitated now. So much had never ridden on my shoulders before. (This is impossible!) I yelled.

(Chill. If we can't get in, the next best thing is to lock them out,) Marco said, sounding oddly gentle. (Give it a try, T-bone. Give it the old college try.) He even laughed a little.

Without realizing I was doing it, I laughed along with him and started punching in numbers. '_It's gonna work this time,_' I thought triumphantly as I finished the code. '_It _has_ to work._'

"Incorrect entry code. Lockdown has been initiated." The voice was emphasized by some forbidding-sounding _clangs _from within the vault door. "Please lie on your stomach and lace your fingers behind your head. Security is en route."

I spun to Marco. (What now? _What now?_)

He didn't have a chance to answer me. Six guys dressed in camo and armed to the teeth came running around the corner, looking like soldiers charging an enemy position. Which, I guess, is exactly what they were. They looked surprised to see us, but it didn't last long.

Suddenly, Marco and I found ourselves looking down the barrels of six very big, very human rifles. One of the soldiers broke rank and stepped forward, and we knew who he was by the way he spoke to us.

(Two Andalites,) he said in thought-speech as his skin started to turn blue. (Two Andalites stand between me and the conquest of your homeworld. You really should surrender, this time. Pretty soon, Andalites are going to be just as extinct as humans. What do the humans call it when they save some of a species before they die out?) His butt was extending way out behind him, tearing his pants as his rear legs and tail sprouted. (Ah, yes, conservation. Think of me as a conservationist.)


	29. Chapter 29

Chapter 29

(Running won't do any good,) Marco said heavily to me. (They've got us like fish in a barrel.)

Anger was flowing through me. I was mad at everything – mad at the Yeerks for starting all of this, mad at Erek for being able to get us into this deathtrap but not get us out. Mad at myself for failing when people needed me most. Mostly mad at myself. (We might as well go down swinging,) I said.

(Don't be stupid,) Marco said, sounding depressed. (They'll pop fifty rounds into each of us before we can take two steps.)

(Well what, then?) I demanded as Visser Three finished demorphing. (You want to surrender?)

(It doesn't matter,) he replied flatly. (Everybody is going to be dead in a short amount of time. For the record, though, I'd rather die full of holes than let one of those dirty, thieving bastards into my head. Charge of the Light Brigade?) he tried one last joke, the last one he'd probably ever make. Light Brigade – right. A gorilla and a Hork-bajir.

Then, wonderfully, magically, beautifully, Marco had an idea. I would have kissed him. He held the case up in front of his chest and addressed Visser Three directly. (I wonder what those high-powered human projectile weapons would do to these beautiful _carbonite _formations,) he said as if he didn't have a care in the world. God, he even _sounded _like a haughty Andalite. Even used the Andalite word for diamond.

Visser Three realized what he was saying and froze. (Do not open fire!) he practically screamed at his men. (The Andalites have managed to extract our prize from the vault already.) As he said this, his eyes narrowed. (Or...have they?) He studied Marco hard. (Perhaps the Andalite has learned the human art of "bluffing." Did you really succeed in taking the diamonds from the vault?)

(Well, Visser, since you asked so nicely…) Marco popped the latch to the case and opened it, briefly showing the controllers the contents. The synthetic diamonds glittered under the fluorescents. He snapped the case closed and said, (Your move, Yeerk.)

Visser Three hesitated for a moment. He smiled with his eyes and began to morph.

(Bad idea, Visser,) I warned. (Your tail is the only usable weapon you have right now. Once it's gone, we can kill you and leave. Your men will be powerless to stop us.) I don't know what I was trying to accomplish, but all I knew was that right now, we had a thin advantage. Visser Three obviously meant to change that with whatever morph he was shifting into.

Visser Three ignored me and gave orders to his men. (Do not let them escape with that case. Shoot if you must, but know that I will kill whoever so much as grazes that case.) The Visser was in mid-morph, a helpless ball of shifting shape.

(Now or never,) I said tensely to Marco. (If you've got an idea to get us out of this, it's now or never.)

(I got an idea,) he confirmed, but he didn't sound very happy about it. (But you're not going to like it.)

Visser Three was starting to raise his main mass off of the linoleum floor on glass-like, spidery legs. I didn't know what he was morphing into, I just knew I didn't want to be around when he finished it. (I don't care! If you're going to do something, do it!)

(Well, all right,) he said. (Get behind me and stay there.) Without waiting for me to answer, he lifted the case in front of him like a shield and charged at the controllers. He let out a scream that was pure gorilla – _Hoo-HOOOAR!_ I followed right behind him.

Nobody shot. They were more scared of Visser Three than they were of losing the case, apparently. Marco hit the line of controllers, bowling over half of them. Then, without a shot being fired, we were past them and moving toward the front of the building.

(Fire! Fire! Fire!) Visser Three screamed. We were about two feet from rounding the corner and getting out of their gunsights when they opened up.

I don't know how many times I was hit in the second before we got around the corner, but it was a lot. It all happened so fast. One second I was fine, the next I was numb and leaking from everywhere. Marco was hit, too. I clearly saw a bullet nearly tear his right arm off at the elbow.

The arm that was holding the case.

No longer able to hold on, Marco dropped it as he skidded around the corner to safety. He slid in a mixture of the Hork-bajir's blood and his own dark red gorilla's blood. Once around the corner, crying in pain, he reached back for the case.

(You idiot!) I moaned through the pain. (Are you delusional? We _want _them to have it!)

Another short burst of gunfire rang out, and Marco pulled back a half of a hand. (I know. And now they think we were willing to die for it. Let's go,) he grunted. He tried to get up to move, but fell back down. He was losing an alarming amount of blood at a sickening speed.

I'd taken at least as many bullets as he had, but Hork-bajir are a well-built species. My wounds were already clotting over, preventing a fatal loss of blood. Careful not to cut him, I grabbed a massive leg and started pulling him to safety.

The Yeerks weren't chasing us. They had gotten what they came for, and they figured that we'd all be dead soon enough anyway, I guess. They were more right than they knew. Marco was starting to babble the incoherent sorts of things a person says when they're dying. I could feel myself weakening, as well. I didn't have the strength to pull him any farther.

(Demorph!) I said desperately.

(Can't risk it,) he gasped. Then, in the same breath, he said, (Chapman will give us detention for a month if he finds out about us.) For once, he wasn't joking. He was dying.

I started forward with some half-witted idea that I was going for help, but I fell down, too. My legs wouldn't do what my brain told them to. Besides, what help?

There _was _no help.


	30. Chapter 30

Chapter 30

When you're dying, things get weird.

For instance, I thought it was all over when I heard the multitude of boots storming toward me. Yelling voices went with them. I didn't even open my eyes – I didn't want to see the end when it came. I didn't want to watch as someone put the bullet in my brain that would make the slow process of dying happen fast. I knew I was hallucinating when the boots and voices never even slowed down as they ran right past me.

'_Wow, I really am dying. Or dead,_' I thought as they passed me up. Even though my brain wasn't working correctly, I could work out that much logic. Controllers wouldn't run past me without blowing me away. Human responders also wouldn't pass me up – I mean, you wouldn't just leave a Hork-bajir lying in a hallway if you'd never seen one before. Depending on the person, they'd either kill me, take me in for research…_something_. But they just ran right past.

When they were gone, I started floating. '_Oh. This must be that out-of-body experience everybody talks about,_' I thought randomly as I floated along. A short time later, I started hearing voices.

Jake was one. (Demorph! Tobias, Marco, demorph! Now!) That fit in with the whole dying experience – Jake wasn't really there. Jake was at Allendale Mutual Bank, fighting the Yeerks.

"Do as he says!" snapped Erek's voice. Ah, yeah, that was a little more realistic. Erek was probably still around. My brain was really getting creative, trying to get me to morph away from my fatal injuries.

I just wanted the voices in my head to leave me alone. I'd done my job, and now I wanted to rest. (Oh, shut up,) I managed to get out.

"He's coming out of it. He's going. Go, Marco!" Erek urged. "That's it, keep it up!"

That confused me. Why would my brain throw me a death hallucination about Marco? Marco was dead, too.

(Is Marco going to be okay?) Jake asked. He sounded terribly desperate.

"I think so. If you can get Tobias out of that morph, do it now, Jake," Erek said, and he sounded just as desperate.

(Tobias, if you can hear me, you have to demorph. You have to!) Jake's thought-speech tone was urgent, and it made me consider the possibility that maybe it wasn't a hallucination. Even so, I was too tired to morph. _Way _too tired.

(Erek is hiding us inside of his hologram. We're about twenty feet away from the diamond exchange. The whole place is swarming – cops, national guard, _everybody_. We have to get out of here! It's only a matter of time before somebody walks into us by accident!)

"Ugh…oh…hey, Jake. That sucked." That was Marco's voice. His actual voice.

'_Good, at least Marco made it,_' I thought, feeling satisfied.

"Tobias, you have to demorph. You have to go see Rachel," Marco said.

Rachel? Was something wrong with Rachel?

"She needs you, Tobias. She needs your help. Rachel's in trouble!" Marco said urgently.

Rachel was in trouble? That changed everything. I could rest later. For now…

I focused as hard as I could. I saw an image of me and Rachel hanging out in her bedroom. I was a hawk, she was a person. I focused on the image of the hawk. It was hard, so hard, but I felt the grass sliding underneath me even though I was still motionless.

(He's shrinking! That's it, man, keep going! Keep going!) Jake insisted.

Keep going? Okay. I could do that.

As I shrank, my thought process started to return to normal. I realized what had happened. Erek must have hid us until it was safe, and then carried us away from the building as far as he dared to go with two mortally wounded Animorphs. For some reason, Jake was here. Now, they were waiting for me to demorph so we could get the heck out of there.

I opened my eyes – my blessedly perfect hawk eyes. I saw Erek sitting beside me and a little peregrine falcon perched on his knee. Marco was on my other side, looking at me with a mix of relief, fascination, and disgust. I spread my wings – yes, wings – and adjusted my tail feathers. Everything seemed to work. (Am I back?) I wondered. (Am I okay?)

Everybody nodded, even Jake's falcon morph. "That was a weird morph, though," Marco said. "Even more barf-tastic than usual."

Suddenly, the last thing Marco had said hit me again. (Rachel! Where is she?) I demanded.

Marco looked down at the dirt. (She's fine, Tobias,) Jake said. (They all are. Marco just said that to get you to demorph.)

I was too worn out to even be mad about being tricked. He'd lied to me for my own good, to save my life. Morphing is physically tiring, but that's not what I mean when I say I was worn out. My mind was frayed. This one had just been too damn close.

"We really do need to vacate the premises," Erek said. Marco nodded, and even though he had to have been as cashed in as me, he somehow began to morph into his osprey.

Jake had been right – the DeBolt Diamond Exchange was seriously crawling with soldiers. Real ones, human ones. I guess they were distracted by the destruction inside, because nobody noticed when three birds of prey appeared out of seemingly thin air and flew west.


	31. Epilogue

Epilogue

My friends and I were all inside of Ax's scoop, waiting for the early afternoon edition of the local news. It was cramped, but that was all right. No one, not even Rachel and Marco, minded being jammed together. It's not often we pull off an out-and-out victory against the Yeerks. We had done that this time. It was almost over. We just had to make sure the loose ends were tied up, which is what we were all doing crammed around Ax's little TV set.

Turned out the others had never really been in much danger. They'd done exactly what Jake and Erek had asked them to – waited until the Yeerks moved on the respective banks, spent just enough time terrorizing them to be believable, then they'd bailed. Well, the bank Rachel had been at would need some work on its lobby…but other than that, it was a fairly clean operation for everybody else.

"Dun dundundun dun, doo doo DUN!" Marco made stupid sound effects to go along with the stupid opening music of the news. I saw Rachel's lip twist like she was about to snap at him…and as I watched, the expression relaxed into an easy smile. That's just a way for you to gauge how good we were feeling – not even Rachel felt like taking the bait and getting into it with Marco. He actually looked a little disappointed.

"Today, the Seaside Stabber is behind bars, say officials from both local police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation," the cheesy-looking guy with the plastic hair helmet behind the news anchor's desk said. "A tip from a reliable source led FBI agents to an undisclosed location in the woods east of the murder scenes." A mugshot of the guy, looking completely insane, popped up beside the news anchor's head, and I suppressed a shudder. "Forty-three year old Arnold Underwood was taken into custody yesterday afternoon. A local attorney, well-respected in the community until his heinous dark side was brought to light, confessed to the murders of seventeen local people, many of the crimes unsolved for years. He has been initially charged with seventeen counts of capital murder and is being held in the county jail without bond."

The guy kept talking, but I stopped listening. Marco slapped Jake a high five. "Seventeen counts of capital murder? He's done. He'll be locked up forever. And that's just if the other inmates don't get to his deranged butt first," he joked.

(Why confess?) I wondered. I wasn't exactly surprised that he had, but I also didn't understand it.

To my surprise, it was Cassie that clued me in. "This way, he gets to be a rock star," she said. She still had that sick tone in her voice. It still hadn't gone away. "He gets the credit for his crimes. In some way, I guess that's what all this was leading up to, before the Yeerks got in the middle of it. He might die in prison, but at least he'll be _free_." We all knew what she meant. "He'll still get fan mail and marriage proposals from people just as sick as he is."

I didn't want to talk about it anymore, and apparently, I wasn't the only one. Ax spoke up. (Now we know what has happened to this human. Can we not discuss it further? I am not ashamed to admit that the whole subject…well, as Marco would say, it gives me both the Willies and the Jim-Jams. I dislike it very much.)

Everybody laughed. Even I joined in – I couldn't help myself. Marco was the first one to get serious, believe it or not. "That's cool with me, Ax-man. I've had enough of this kind of thing to last a lifetime."

Jake, Rachel, Cassie, and I agreed. Jake checked the little clock on Ax's coffee table and stood to stretch. "Well, just one more thing to do. Ready?"

This was the exciting part. We were actually going to get to see the fruits of our labor, for once. The Yeerks were bringing their new super-Dracons out into the woods to test them. Erek had told us that Visser Three had even called in a specialist called a Stanteen to witness his great triumph. A Stanteen was someone who made sure the far reaches of the Yeerk Empire was maintaining their standards, whatever they are. Stanteens reported directly to the Council of Thirteen, the heads of the Yeerk Empire.

Thanks to Erek, we knew exactly when and where this demonstration was to take place. We got there a few moments ahead of time in the most inconspicuous morph we could think of that would still be able to observe the action – sparrows. Ugh. Obnoxious little things, but perfect for fitting in just about anywhere.

Right on schedule, several Yeerk ships landed and started ejecting Hork-bajir and Taxxon troops throughout the demonstration site. Visser Three ordered some of them to form a loose perimeter, but he wasn't worried about us. Erek had told us that the Visser had believed every part of our charade. He believed that we knew what he wanted and why he wanted them, and that we had tried to stop him from getting his precious diamonds. He also believed that we knew what he would do to the planet after he showed off his new weapons to the Council's emissary. He actually thought we were on our way back to the Andalite homeworld right now, tails between our hooves. He actually believed that, Erek said.

He was excited; anybody could see that as he lightly galloped in front of his line of troops. Six Hork-bajir stood elbow to elbow, each holding the new, advanced Dracon rifle. A smaller, sleeker ship than the Bug fighters landed off to the side, and an elderly-looking Gedd hobbled down the ramp.

Visser Three acted differential to him. (Ah, greetings, greetings! It is an honor for you to join us for this glorious demonstration!) Visser Three boomed proudly at the Gedd, who just looked at him like the whole affair was boring him already. (This is a historic day for the magnificence for the Yeerk Empire! The Council -)

"The council eagerly awaits my – hhhch! – report," the Gedd-controller who was obviously the Stanteen cut him off. "I will observe your demonstration. I will not watch you posture and – hhhch! – pose for hours. Get to it."

Even being talked down to like that couldn't dampen the Visser's good mood. (Very well. Acquire targets!) he ordered. The Hork-bajir pointed their weapons downrange, where several sheets of metal in the shape of Andalites had been scattered. Everyone else was at a safe distance, but they all leaned forward eagerly to see the results of the demonstration. Even the Stanteen had a difficult time looking disinterested. Visser Three made sure he was watching, then gave the order. (Fire!)

At first, all that happened was everything the Visser expected. What looked like a pure wall of solid Dracon energy poured downrange, disintegrating the metal targets with ease. (Yes! Yes! Finally, the Andalites are under my hooves! Yes!)

His celebration was cut short. The Hork-bajir on the end lost his grip on his rifle as it started to vibrate violently. Dozens of aliens hit the deck as the gun bounced along the ground and spewed Dracon energy everywhere like an out-of-control lawn sprinkler for a split second before it exploded.

As that one went off, the others suffered massive failures, as well. Two Hork-bajir in the middle just disappeared in the crackling black hole of the _flaargaars_. Another rifle hopped a good twenty feet along the ground before exploding in the middle of a group of observing Taxxons. The brave Yeerk soldiers scattered and ran in terror, yelling in their respective languages.

From start to finish, the demonstration had lasted maybe ten seconds. When it was over, I counted at least a dozen gravely injured controllers. None of the prototype rifles had survived. Visser Three was staring out at the scene in disbelief.

"Well done, Visser Three," grated the Stanteen, who was hiding behind the boarding ramp to his ship. "I am impressed, as I am sure the Council – hhhch! – will be." He hobbled aboard his ship, retracted his ramp, and flew away as his ship cloaked itself.

(But – the engineers _promised _– they said it would work,) Visser Three muttered. He seemed to be in shock. (They…they…aaaAAARRRGGGHHH!) His thought-speech scream of rage rose in volume until it felt like my little sparrow skull was vibrating like the Dracon rifles. His stalk eyes wheeled wildly until they locked on to a group of Taxxons. Without warning, he charged at them, his tail already whipping crazily out in front of them. (It's _your _fault! It's _your _fault!) he yelled in some sort of shock-induced psychosis.

We'd seen enough, and the remaining controllers didn't notice when six sparrows flitted away in formation through the trees. They were too busy avoiding their most dangerous enemy – an enraged Visser Three.

I replayed the scene in my head as we flew away, and suddenly, I started laughing. It was funny – sue me. Hysterical, actually. I actually felt lightheaded as I flew through the forest, laughing away in thought-speech. I noticed the others were all laughing as hard as I was. It was all just so darn _ridiculous_. I landed on a small branch before I could smash headfirst into a tree and die from laughing too hard. The others all perched in the same tree.

I can't tell you how long the six of us stayed in that tree, just cracking up, but it was a while. Finally, as we were all winding down, Jake said, (Oh…oh man. That was great.) He tried to get the giggle out of his tone, and succeeded after a minute.

(My dad's at work,) Marco said gleefully. (I say we go over there, order about ten large pizzas, and watch some tube.)

(Yes! Pizza!) Ax agreed immediately, which started another round of laughter. We all followed Marco as he turned west to head toward his place.

(We got him. We saved the world _and _made Visser Three look like an ass, all in a forty-eight hour period,) I mused.

(Saving the world is good and all…but I'd trade my next year's worth of allowance to see the look on Visser Three's face again, I wouldn't even have to think about it,) Cassie laughed.

One time, Marco had told me that it's the little things that keep him going. The stupid little things that made him laugh that kept him sane, kept him in the fight. At the time, I'd thought he was just a silly little kid who didn't know what he was talking about.

Now I know better. He was right.

**Author's Note: **Thank you again to everyone who reviewed throughout this fic! I hope you all enjoyed it! I want to say a special thanks to these people: kimjledford, Sweetbriar, chlorinehamster, wredan, Theanimorpherz, jurjid and iris129. Knowing that you guys would review it if I posted it made finishing this one a treat to work on. I hope to see you over for the second half of Ax's fic, The Revenge! Oh, and just because this one is finished, don't think I don't want any more reviews! I might just end up writing these canon stand-alones until the day I die, and if I do, any comments on this fic and the others like it will be so helpful and appreciated! Thanks again, everybody! Hope you had as much fun as I did. :D

-Shane C


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